Floor Statements

Mr. President, I somewhat associate myself with the remarks of the Senator from Louisiana. We have unwound because we don't want to have real debates and real votes. We just fixed the flood insurance program. We didn't fix it well enough, and if Senator Landrieu is allowed her amendment, I will vote against it, but I think she ought to be able to have her amendment.

The reason the Senate isn't working is because we want to use a procedure that has never before been used except in the last 2 or 3 years in this body, and that is to limit the rights of Senators to offer amendments.

The fact is that Senator Landrieu may, in fact, win her amendment, but there is another chance. The House may not go along with it. There will be a conference committee. It may not go anywhere. She didn't win this when we fixed the flood insurance. She wasn't for us raising it to the extent we did. We didn't raise it nearly enough to make it healthy yet. And delaying the 3 years will markedly hurt the Flood Insurance Program, which is operated through FEMA, and I am the ranking member on that subcommittee. But the fact is that she ought to be able to offer her amendment. I agree with that.

So what I am going to do is painfully go through and talk about every amendment I have for the farm bill. I understand there will be objections. If there are objections to mine--and even if the Landrieu amendment gets cleared, I am going to object to everybody else's until mine are cleared.

So we can either keep going around in this circle or we can start acting like grownups and have debate. Even if a Member doesn't like an amendment, we can vote on it. And if a Member is not capable of defending their vote on any issue, they don't have any business being here in the first place.

But to not vote, to not allow the managers of the bill to operate the bill the way they want to operate it and put it on the table--because the majority leader is going to file cloture, and so all of these amendments are going to fall, which may be pleasing to the managers--I don't know--and only the germane amendments are going to be available, and they are going to be under a time constraint. So the American people are actually going to get cheated out of a full and rigorous debate on what ought to be changed in this bill.

So I am going to act as though the amendments are approved even though they are not, and I am going to debate the amendments. I am going to propose every one of them, and I am going to let the Senator from Louisiana object, and then she can explain to her constituents the dysfunction of the Senate. It does not just happen on the Republican side, I would remind my colleague from Louisiana. There are plenty of unilateral objections on the other side. And if we are going to operate this way, then nothing is going to happen in the Senate.

With that, I will begin.

I will be happy to yield for a question.

I agree.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the pending amendment be set aside and Coburn amendment No. 1003 be called up.

Mr. President, I am going to talk about this amendment. This is an amendment that prohibits--let me set the stage for it. We are going to have somewhere between a $500 billion and $700 billion deficit. We have $17.5 trillion worth of debt today. What this amendment does is it prohibits people who are tax evaders from receiving government assistance, including grants, contracts, loans, and tax credits provided in the farm bill, with the exception of SNAP. So we are still going to take care of the food provision. Even if they refuse to pay their taxes, we are going to still provide them food. But we are not going to allow them, with this amendment, to take advantage of other programs within the farm bill or any other area that is associated with direct grants or associated with the Agriculture bill.

The most critical issues facing our country today--and everybody knows how to solve it. We know what has to be done to save Medicare. We know what has to be done to save Social Security. We know we need to reform the Tax Code so we generate more jobs, we generate more income to the Federal Government. We know all that. But we have billions of dollars that are owed--it is not being contested; it is owed--and then we turn around to those same people who owe us billions of dollars and give them programs and benefits. Whether it be conservation payments or whether it be crop insurance or whatever it is, we turn around and give them money. I think the average tax-paying American does not agree with that.

Part of being a responsible citizen is paying the taxes you owe. We are not talking about things that are in dispute. We are talking about settled agreements that are not paid, and they continue to not be paid, and it is billions of dollars.

This provision would not apply if the individual is currently paying the taxes, interest, and penalties that are owed to the IRS: if the individual and the IRS have worked out a compromise on the amount of taxes, interest, and penalties and it is in the process of being repaid; if the individual has not exhausted his or her right to due process under the law; if the individual has filed a joint return and successfully contends that he or she should not be fully liable for the taxes in a joint return because of something the other party to the return did or did not do. Further, this provision would not apply to SNAP payments provided in the bill.

Farm income is subject to very little scrutiny and reporting requirements. In fact, there was a 78-percent reporting gap in farm income reported to the IRS just last year--a 78-percent gap. This is by far the largest gap in individual income reporting to the IRS.

In a time of strict budgets and when many in Washington are calling for an increase in revenue, it is inappropriate for us to continue to provide funding to individuals who owe back taxes and are not in compliance with their obligations. Total taxes owed in the United States in 2006 were $2.66 trillion. The gross tax gap for that year-- taxes owed but not collected--was $450 billion. The net tax gap in 2006--taxes still not paid after late payments enforced--was still $385 billion. Now the President wants another $600 billion or $800 billion. What we have to do is start figuring out ways to collect the taxes that are owed.

According to the Internal Revenue Service, the difference between the amount legally owed in taxes and the amount actually collected was this $385 billion. That is the most recent year the IRS can give us--5-year- old data. Mr. President, $28 billion that was owed was because people failed to file. Underpayment was $46 billion, and intentional underreporting of income was $376 billion.

So what this amendment does is it just puts a prohibition in place. It says: You cannot have this money if you owe X money and it is settled, it is not under dispute. So it is not about not giving people their rights. It has already been adjudicated. Why would we not want to do that with the farm bill? Can you think of a reason why we would not want the people who owe taxes, who already have agreed they owe the taxes--that we are going to give them money, and they are not going to pay the taxes they owe the Federal Government?

It is a commonsense amendment. We are not going to get a vote on that, and we are not going to get a vote on it because we have cowardly Members of the Senate--and I am not talking about the Senator from Louisiana--who refuse to come down here and voice their objections to bills and refuse to debate why they will not allow an amendment that does something for the future, that actually will make a difference in a kid's life in the future, that will actually increase some income so we can afford the Flood Insurance Program we have. They will not come down and debate it and express an opinion why they will not allow a vote on it. It dishonors the Senate.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the pending amendment be set aside and amendment No. 1004 be called up.

Mr. President, this amendment ends conservation payments to millionaires--people who make a million bucks a year.

We have a rule at the USDA that says people making $1 million a year are not supposed to get these payments. But guess what the USDA does. They waive the rule. What this amendment would do is say you cannot waive the rule.

If you, again, are talking about our debt, the very well-heeled, the very well-connected are getting a majority of the conservation payments in this country. They are the ones most capable of doing conservation on their own land, and do, but now they do it with the assistance of my or the President pro tempore's grandchildren because what we are actually doing is paying them dollars that our grandkids are going to have to pay back. What we are doing with this program is incentivizing people to do what they are already going to do in their best interests.

All I am saying is, enforce the rule, the law today. Do not give the Department of Agriculture the ability to waive. If somebody is making $1 million a year, they do not need our help right now. Our kids need that help, our grandkids need that help, our schools need that help. They do not need that help.

Absolutely.

Well, Mr. President, I thank the chairman of the committee. I will double-check that with my staff. This excludes something that was in the bill, so I will have to look at what the old bill said to be able to concur with that. If that is the case, then there should not be any problem with accepting this amendment if, in fact, it is not complete because it is the intent of the authors--both the chair and the ranking member--that this limitation be a part of this farm bill.

I thank the chairman of the committee.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the pending amendment be set aside and amendment No. 1005 be called up.

Mr. President, 3\1/2\ years ago, with the debt limit increase, my colleagues and I overwhelmingly voted to ask the GAO to study duplicative programs in the Federal Government. This last April they gave the third in what will be a continuing rollout of the programs in the Federal Government.

I will say that the Director of the OMB followed another amendment that I offered directing that all the programs of the Federal Government be published. They made their first stab at that. This was last week. Director Burwell, in whom I have the utmost confidence at OMB--a stellar individual--made the first attempt. The problem is, what is a program in the Federal Government? There is no definition. So we have a rough start in an attempt to do that.

But what the GAO has done--and they are magnificent employees--over the last 3\1/2\ years is identified at least $250 billion of waste and duplication that we ought to be getting rid of.

Here is an amendment that is not highly prescriptive but recognizes what GAO told us about food assistance programs--domestic food assistance programs. We did not make any attempt in this bill to streamline those or consolidate them or put metrics on them. So this amendment tries to bring that together through the USDA to put, No. 1, metrics on them; and, No. 2, combine the ones that are duplicative so we can actually be effective in what we intend them to be, but also be efficient.

Those are two words that hardly ever happen in Washington, ``efficiency'' and ``effectiveness.'' GAO found signs of overlap and inefficient use of the resources within the 18 different programs. Now, we have 18 different programs. Three of them are outside of the Department of Agriculture. One of them is in Homeland Security.

First of all, there should not be a food assistance program in the Department of Homeland Security. Two of them are at HHS. We should not have duplicative bureaucracies in those other two departments when we have a bureaucracy in Agriculture. But of those 18 programs, what they found was the following: In 11 of the 18 programs, there was not enough research to even determine whether the programs were effective.

We do not know if what we are doing is working because never when we pass these programs do we require a metric or some type of method to assess their effectiveness. So that is one of the things this amendment will do. It allows the Department of Agriculture to do that. As a matter of fact, it mandates it. Is it effective? What parameters are you using to say it is effective? In other words, if the American taxpayers are going to spend money on this program, ought they to know whether it works? I mean, only in Washington do we do programs and not know whether they work and not ask whether they work.

So in 11 of the 18 programs there is not enough knowledge even at the Department of Agriculture to know whether they are working. This amendment requires the Department of Agriculture to evaluate the following 10 programs: Child and Adult Care Food Program, the Community Food Projects Competitive Grant Program, the Emergency Food and Shelter National Board Program, the Grants to the American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian Program, the Organizations for Nutrition and Support Services Program, the Food Distribution Program on Indian Reservations, the Fresh Fruit and Vegetables Program, the Senior Farmer Market Nutrition Program, the Summer Food Service Program, the Emergency Food Assistance Program, and the WIC Farmers Nutritional Program.

Now, let me just mention one of these. The Summer Food Service Program, as announced by KOTV in Tulsa, OK, just last night, no matter who you are they are going to feed you two meals a day in the summer, whether you make $100,000 a year or whether you are in need of a meal. So, first of all, we have a problem with that program. We ought to be supplying food for people who need food, not for people who do not need food. Smart people are going to take advantage of that and say: Man, I can get two meals a day. I am not in need, but since it is free I am going to take it.

Last summer we served 180,000 meals in Tulsa. A large proportion of those were not people in need. So I have no objection to helping people who have need, but here is a program that has no limits on it and no metrics on it. It is a wide open program--well intentioned, but there is not a metric and there is not a limitation.

So here is all we are saying with this amendment: Here are 10 programs, Department of Agriculture. Determine whether they are effective. And, by the way, how did you determine that? What were the parameters you used to do that?

That is just common sense. Why would we not want to know if the programs are working? Why would we not want to know if they are efficient and

effective? Why shouldn't we look at it when we are running--we are down to 24 cents on the dollar that we are just borrowing against our kids' future from 48. That is because of the economy growing last year to the tune of $360 billion coming in, and $620 billion over the next 10 years in tax increases on the very wealthy in this country. So we are down to 24 cents, but we are still borrowing 24 cents out of every dollar we spend. Why would we not want to spend the time to make sure these programs are effective and efficient?

It is very straightforward. This amendment also eliminates one program, the Commodity Supplemental Food Program, and moves any incomplete or ongoing projects to the appropriate USDA programs. USDA proposed eliminating this program which targets low-income pregnant women, children, persons age 60 or over, but Congress continued to fund the program. The reason they wanted to get rid of it is because there are already programs that duplicate this one. Yet here we find it is still going to get funded. It is going to get authorized. Even USDA says we do not need this program.

It is the only program we have--in 2012, the program was funded at $177 million, and it duplicates SNAP, Grants to Native Americans, the Home Delivered Nutrition Program. In other words, USDA already recognizes it is a duplicative program. They have asked for it to be eliminated. We did not eliminate it. So this amendment would eliminate it.

This amendment also eliminates the Senior Farmers Market Nutrition Program and moves the nonduplicate function to the WIC Farmers Nutrition Program. Both of these programs do exactly the same thing. They provide grants to participating States to offer vouchers and coupons and electronic benefit cards to low-income participants that may be used in farmers' markets, roadside stands, and other approved venues to purchase fresh produce.

They provide exactly the same assistance to women, children, and seniors and should be combined. GAO says they should be combined. USDA says they should be combined. But they are not combined in the bill. All cost savings from the elimination of those consolidations and three eliminations are directed toward providing food assistance. In other words, none of the money comes back out. It goes back into programs that have proven to be effective.

This amendment also directs the USDA to coordinate with the Health and Human Services Administration on Aging to identify and address fragmentation, overlap, and duplication between the programs providing food services on Indian reservations where we have a real need. So we are not just looking for duplication, we are looking for gaps in service.

It also requires them to report their recommendations back to Congress. Since I do not want to use my big slides today I will use my small slides.

Here are the food assistance programs, all 18 of them. Fifteen are run at the Department of Agriculture, two are run through HHS, and one through Homeland Security. Yet GAO says we can collapse these 18 into 10 and be more effective and get better nutrition to the people in at- risk groups. We have not done it. So it is like we asked GAO to do all of this work, and then we did not pay any attention to it.

I ask that the pending amendment be set aside and amendment No. 1006 be called up.

I will yield for a question, but I will not yield the floor. I will be happy to yield for a question.

I would respond to the Senator from Louisiana, I have no ill will toward her objection. I stated it plainly before. I believe the Senate ought to have any and all amendments prior to cloture. I think Senators have the right to offer anything they think is pertinent to this country on any bill that is going through here. I used that tactic for the first 3 years I was in the Senate. Nobody objected. Now that we have become so partisan and so cowardly that we are afraid to vote on issues, and that we abuse the rights in the Senate to the detriment of the whole body, I hold no ill will against the Senator for objecting.

The point is, is the country worse off for it? I am sure some of my colleagues do not want to have to vote on some of my amendments. I understand that. There are amendments I do not like voting on either, but I have no problem going home and taking a stand. The fact is we can figure out what we are for and what we are against. You know, the fact is, when it goes through here it does not mean it is law. What it means is it has to be conferenced with the House. We ought to let it roll. We ought to open the spigot and let things roll in the Senate, have the votes.

We used to have 10 and 12 votes at a time. We used to do bills. Come down and all morning long we would be offering amendments. We would have committee hearings and other things in the afternoon. At 4 o'clock we would come down and vote, 9, 10, 8 amendments. The next day we would do the same thing. The next day we would do the same thing.

So the fact is, if we really want to get our country back, if we really want the confidence of the American people to return to those who represent them in Washington, we have to start saying, you know, you cannot win everything. I am going to try. If I lose, I lose. But I tried hard. That is how we ought to play the game.

The fact that we have people abusing the process on both sides, not just one side--I will never forget, former Senator Akaka, one of the loveliest men I have ever met in my life, when I first came to the Senate and offered an amendment that was not germane, he objected to it. One of my colleagues stood up and said: Senator Akaka, do you really mean that? You have to understand where that starts. If you object to his amendment, that means in the future I am going to be objecting to your amendment, and we have not done that. What we actually want is a free-wheeling, open amendment process so people can be heard.

The fact is I represent 4 million people. The Senators from California represent 37 million. Everybody's voice ought to be heard. We each ought to be able to have our voice heard. We each ought to be able to offer amendments. We ought to be able to get votes on those amendments. What are we afraid of? Is the next election really that important that we do not want to allow people to offer their ideas, in what used to be the greatest deliberative body? It certainly is not now. It is not anywhere close. Do we really not want ideas to be offered and debated and the American people to understand what is at stake?

I mean, what I have offered today maybe not everybody would agree with, but you cannot disagree that it does not make sense; that it is not common sense; that we should not be more efficient and more effective; that we should worry about the future as we worry about the present; that we ought not to be spending 24 cents out of every dollar by borrowing it from other people in the world or having Ben Bernanke print it at the Federal Reserve.

We can solve these problems. The grown-ups need to stand and say we are going to have debate, we are going to have amendments, even if we do not like them.

So I have no ill will toward the Senator from Louisiana. I have ill will for the process that has devolved. I think the shame is that the American people are being shortchanged by the lack of debate and lack of votes.

I think this amendment, even though objected to, is another critical area where we do not have our eye on the ball. This is an amendment that relates to the Specialty Crop Block Grant Program. What it does is in this bill it has been increased, the amount of money has been increased to $70 million a year. It was at $55 million in 2012. There is nothing wrong with having this block grant program, but I want to show you how we can save $75 million over the next 5 years. And $75 million is not chump change, it is $75 million.

The amendment freezes spending for the specialty crop block grant at $55 million authorized by the bill. The amendment prioritizes food safety and access to affordable foods for schoolchildren and low-income families. One-third of the projects funded by the Specialty Crop Block Grant Program last year were for marketing and promotion. They were not for kids, they were not for seniors, they were spending money to promote.

Let me show you who got the money. Let's see. We spent money to promote the emotional benefits of real flowers and plants in the home. That has to be a priority right now; is it not? We are going to borrow $500 billion this year. We are going to spend money to make sure everyone in America knows the emotional value of having real flowers and plants in the home. That is a priority right now. How about grant funds for floats that travel to fairs and festivals and encourage people to eat more fruits and vegetables? That has to be a priority. We are going to pay for a float that goes around to all these festivals so we can promote eating. People know about eating properly. Could we spend that dollar in a better way and get a better effect?

How about wine receptions and tasting? By the way, the Market Access Program already covers it, but we take money from this block grant program and promote wines in China and in Taiwan. We do it also with the Market Access Program. Here is an absolute direct duplication. We are spending millions of dollars promoting something that another program is designed to promote, and we didn't do anything about that.

How about a short video showcasing pear growers and promoting State wines in Mexico and in India? Again, duplication of what the Market Access Program does, but we take from the Specialty Crop Block Grant Program. We have one program for market access and promotion and then we take a different program and use it for exactly the same thing.

Specifically, the amendment requires that no less than 80 percent of the total funding appropriated for the Specialty Crop Block Grant Program be spent on the following: increasing access, availability and affordability of specialty crops for children, youth, families and others at risk, including but not limited to specialty crops for meals served at schools and food banks; ensuring food safety; protecting crops from plant pests and disease; and production of specialty crops.

That is what it was originally set up for, by the way. It wasn't set up to promote wines in India or China or Taiwan or Brazil or Mexico. So part of it is the way we wrote the bill that allows USDA to give grants that go outside the original purposes of it. Funds could still be spent on marketing promotion but not at the expense of crops and consumers.

I ask unanimous consent that the pending amendment be set aside and Coburn amendment No. 1007 be called up.

I would be happy to yield a limited time for the Senator to ask for unanimous consent.

I yield to the chairman of the committee.

Mr. President, I think I am starting to hear the Senate starting to work the way it should, and so I am going to offer a unanimous consent request that the list she presently has, with the ranking member, the Senator from Mississippi, of a large number of amendments be considered as read and in order; that the list the Senator proffered, which went through both cloakrooms this afternoon, I ask unanimous consent that be agreed to and those be filed and considered.

Since objection is heard, it was my understanding the Senator from Michigan had an agreed-upon list that was sent to both cloakrooms.

Failing that, what I would propose, based on what I have heard out here this afternoon, is that the chairman put it together and let's try it and let's ask unanimous consent.

The fact is the chairman and ranking member of this committee have worked hard to get this bill. We can do this bill. But one thing the Senator said in her statement is she wants a finite list. That is fine. What we want to do is have an open amendment process. So as the Senator considers that, let's move it.

Here is what will happen, and here is what used to happen in the Senate, for my colleagues who are new. People file all sorts of amendments, including me, and about half of them we wouldn't bring up. So we don't know in this universe of 150 how many are truly serious, how many are done filing an amendment and made a statement, such as I did on one amendment changing the name of SNAP. I have no intention of calling that up, but I wished to make a statement about whether it is really nutrition--the Supplemental Nutrition Access Program. So I would suggest the chairman and ranking member put that out there. Give it to me and let me offer a unanimous consent request on the floor live. We have had a great debate. We understand what the problems are. Let's start voting. Let's start debating and voting.

When we consider all the time huddled in a group of staffers, we don't do anything. We don't debate the bill, we don't vote the bill, and so, consequently, the American people get shortchanged. So I will offer that unanimous consent request. I will not even participate in what is in the mix. I believe the process ought to move forward, whether I win or not. The fact is it is selfishness on the part of our colleagues, because they do not want to vote on something, that keeps us from doing the country's work.

I believe we are at a seminal moment right now in the Senate where we can change what is happening in this body if, in fact, we will lead in doing that. I know the President pro tempore wants to see that happen. I believe my colleague from Michigan wants to see that happen. I know the ranking member has had that philosophy for years in the Senate. He taught it to me. I learned that from him.

I offered a lot of amendments that he opposed and didn't like, some of them affecting Mississippi, and he beat me every time. But he never said, You can't offer the amendment.

I think we are at a seminal moment. Let's start moving things. What I will do is call on the ranking member and the chairman: Give me that list. Let me go fight for it. Let's break this beaver dam in the Senate, and let's start acting like grownups here.

I would be willing to yield for a question.

I know there is a question in there somewhere.

That is correct.

Mr. President, I have a unanimous consent, and I want to preface this unanimous consent. There are 150 amendments, I think the chairman said, or thereabouts. A lot of those aren't going to require votes; some are. I ask unanimous consent that every amendment that has been filed at this point be considered as read and considered debatable and votable.

If an objection is heard--I retain my time.

I would appreciate my time.

Let me make this point. If the Senator from Michigan wouldn't have objected, we could start voting tonight, we could vote tomorrow, we could get through those. Half of those will be pulled, and we would be almost to the same number of votes you would have had, that you did have, the last time the bill came to the floor. So do we really want to break this logjam? Let me offer it again. We can move this thing. Let's just do it. Let's go out and vote. Let's take the tough votes. Some of us are going to get bruised. Big deal. We are all grownups. Let's have the votes. Let's move amendments. Let's debate in the Senate. Let's do the country's business. Instead, we are not going to do it.

There is a compromise. More than half of those will be withdrawn. My colleagues know that. Let's put them all in order. Let's vote them, let's take care of it, and let's be grown up and get the Senate back to where it is supposed to be.

I am going to offer my unanimous consent one more time, that every amendment that has been filed today as of now be considered as read and pending.

Mr. President, fair and balanced consideration to our colleagues is allowing them to have amendments, and the Senator just objected to that. So that is where we are. That doesn't keep her from managing the bill. The Senator still gets to set the priorities of what comes up when. But here lies the problem in the Senate: There are obviously some amendments in there they don't want to vote on; otherwise, we would not have heard an objection. So it is not just Senator Toomey, who has now said he would not object to Senator Landrieu's amendment, it is other objections of people who won't come down here to the floor and show their constituency what they are objecting to. In other words, it is darkness. It is not light, it is not transparency, it is not of good character, it is not of good moral fiber. What it is, is the least of these, the lowest of these, who refuse to participate in an open and honest debate about what is going to happen in our country.

I call on all my colleagues, Republican and Democrat alike. We know what has to happen to open the Senate. Let's vote. Let's vote. For my colleagues on the Republican side objecting, I disagree. Go ahead and vote. For my colleagues on the Democratic side, let's vote. Let the chips fall. The American people decide who is to come up here. Gaming this system by hiding behind an anonymous objection, putting it through the chairman--I am proud to see the Senator from Louisiana. She came down here, she showed courage and said, Here is why I am doing it. She spoke honestly to her constituents back home and also to the Members of this body. We don't have enough of that.

We had an opportunity just then to move this bill, restore the Senate to the way it should function, and we chose not to do it. The American people have got to be shaking their head right now in disgust, because had the time been spent, instead of figuring out what is OK and what is not OK, actually debating and then voting amendments, we could have voted 30 or 40 amendments by now on this bill. But we chose not to do it. Some of us chose not to do it.

Kindergarten is out around most of the rest of the country, except in the Senate, and it is still in session here. We ought to be disgusted with ourselves, and the American people ought to be disgusted with us as well, because we are not allowing this body to do what our Founders intended it to do. I am going to spend a minute talking about that.

This place is very different than the House. No matter who is in charge, the tendency is to overuse the power of the majority. But what our Founders intended was the Senate to be totally different than the House. The reason 6-year terms were put there was so you wouldn't be susceptible to the political influence of reelection, so you would become a long-term thinker, and that your motivation would be primarily a motivation for the best will of this country and not your State or your political career.

The assessment of the Senate today is that we have lost our focus. It is about politics, not our country. It is about the short term, not the long term. It is about anything but the best interests of the country.

Here we have commonsense amendments. I appreciate the fact that the chairman and ranking member have included some of mine in what they were proffering, but let's include them all. What is so bad about voting on a stupid amendment? If it is really stupid, they are either going to withdraw it or lose big. If it is really controversial, the American people want to see us debate and vote on controversial topics. They do not want to see us duck our responsibilities.

We have met the enemy. The enemy is us.

Mr. President, since I have an objection to that amendment 1007, I ask unanimous consent that amendment No. 1008 be called up.

Mr. President, even though the amendment has been objected to, I am going to talk about it.

The amendment is to require the Rural Utilities Service of the Department of Agriculture to ensure that the grants and loans it makes to provide access to broadband telecommunications services in rural areas are made to rural areas that don't already have access to broadband.

Wait a minute. Why would we want an amendment to do that? This is an amendment to tell them to do what they are supposed to be doing.

Over the years, the rural broadband program has seen a large amount of Federal funding. In 2009, the Department of Agriculture broadband program received $2.5 billion from the stimulus bill. The inspector general examined the Rural Utilities Service broadband loan and guarantee program, and what he found was that a large majority of the funds went to areas that already had broadband services. In other words, they didn't spend the money where we don't have broadband; they spent the money where we already do.

Specifically, this inspector general found that 148 communities that received broadband service funded by this program were within 30 miles of cities with more than 200,000 people--including the cities of Chicago and Las Vegas.

Some of the Federal funds going to broadband programs originate from the Department of Commerce as well. So we have the Department of Agriculture

and the Department of Commerce both doing the same thing.

The issue is highlighted by the problems with the broadband program that occurred in West Virginia, the President pro tempore's State. Specifically, the State could not handle nor had the use for the routers that were delivered to them. Put simply, the libraries and schools didn't have the need for the powerful stuff that was sent to them. So we wasted the money. It was a $24 million error.

You get to $1 billion $1 million at a time, and you get to $1 trillion $1 billion at a time.

What this amendment does is make them spend the money where we don't have broadband, not where we do. In other words, it prioritizes--which most of us would agree to--that broadband funds through this grant program go to areas that don't have broadband rather than areas that already do. So let's wire the whole country first before we upgrade everybody else.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the pending amendment be set aside, and amendment No. 1010 be brought up.

Mr. President, this amendment is very controversial, I know, amongst my colleagues. But I have practiced medicine for 25 years, and before that I ran a pretty successful business.

The Department of Health and Human Services delayed the implementation of ICD-10. Let me explain what that is. ICD-10 is a new diagnostic code book. Why is that important? Well, we use ICD-9 now, which helps us write the diagnostic codes. Whether you are in a hospital, a clinic, a doctor's office, an outpatient surgery center, a home health, whatever it is, those diagnostic codes categorize what we actually did for you. Well-intentioned public health experts thought we aren't broad enough in what we do with the ICD-9, International Classification of Diseases, so as a part of the Affordable Care Act, ICD-10 was implemented.

There is nothing wrong with updating it, but let me explain to you what we did. We went from 18,000 codes of diseases to 140,000 codes, the cost of which, at a minimum, in the health care system under various studies will be at least $5 billion a year in added costs.

Will there be some benefit? Yes, to the public health experts who study disease patterns there will be some limited benefit. The question we have to ask is, What is our biggest problem with health care? Our biggest problem with health care is it costs too much. What we have done with ICD-10 is, just the implementation--I am talking $5 billion a year from here on. The implementation is going to cost $10 to $15 billion to put it in. What this amendment would do is make a significant delay in the implementation of ICD-10.

The implementation of the Affordable Care Act is going to cost enough as it is. This would refocus us on what is important. It is important that providers spend time with patients, not spend time trying to figure out how they fill out a disease code. For any of you who doubt the significance of this now, if there are 18,000 codes now--most doctors write the disease code. They don't have a staff to do that. When you go from 18,000 to 140,000, what are your doctors going to be doing? They are not going to take care of you, they are going to be spending time looking at a book that has 140,000 diagnostic codes and listing that. So we are going to take time away from patient care.

Why is it important that the doctors get it right? Because the penalties under Medicare for mislabeling are severe and the sanctions are severe--penalties of 1 percent to 2 percent payment per year on your total billing to Medicare or Medicaid. So the costs associated with ICD-10 are enormous. So it is not only hard and costly to implement it, but it takes people away, the very doctors we want spending time with patients. It limits that because they are going to be spending more time filling out paperwork for the Federal Government.

The other thing it will do is it will not improve health care outcomes at all. It does nothing to improve health care outcomes. It will not improve the first patient, so there is no positive benefit in the short run or medium term to the patient. The only limited benefit would be to long-term studies of public health.

Let me give some diagnostic codes to think about how foolish this is.

The new codes account for injury sites ranging from opera houses to chicken coops to squash courts. Not only do you have to list what an injury was, you then have to go through this book and find out where it was. Was it on a ranch? Was it in the coral? Was it in the chicken coop? If you mislabel it, you are under threat of penalty from CMS.

How about nine different codes where you got hurt around a mobile home? How about a burn due to water skis? How about walking into a lamp post? If you hit your head it is important for public health officials to know that you walked into a lamp post.

It includes 300 different codes related to every different animal. So if you got a bite from a rat or a chipmunk or a squirrel, there are 312 different codes around each one of those animals.

It has 72 codes pertaining to birds. You got pooped on, you got pecked at, you got bit--72 separate codes.

How about bitten by a turtle or, the second one, struck by a turtle? Or walked on a turtle? Or kicked a turtle? That is how much foolishness is in ICD-10. We are going to ask our doctors to spend time figuring out 160,000 different codes, disease related, when 18,000 does it just fine right now. What this would do would forego the implementation of

I understand the objection. I have no ill will toward my chairman or ranking member for their objection.

What this amendment does is during sequester, it prohibits performance awards in the Senior Executive Service. We are paying performance bonuses right now during sequester. The Office of Management and Budget has ordered a freeze on most bonuses for Federal workers during sequestration, but the current law provides an exemption for members of the Senior Executive Service who are among the most highly paid Federal Government employees. This amendment closes that exemption loophole. If we are all going to suffer, everybody is going to suffer. Just because you work in the Senior Executive Service doesn't mean you should not have to participate and lead on the sacrifice this country is going to have to be making and is making. This treats SES personnel just like every other Federal employee.

I ask the pending amendment be set aside--actually, I think I will stop with that--one other.

Mr. President, I ask amendment No. 1152 be called up.

I have not made that decision.

I will tell you how I go through looking at the farm bill. I believe farmers ought to farm. I don't believe they ought to farm the government. I think you all, over the last few years, have done a good job changing that scenario.

I believe food security is an important part of what America can do for both our country and our world. I also know our farmers are some of our hardest working people.

Having said all of that, there are a ton of programs in here that do not directly benefit food security in this country or the American public. When we still have the well-heeled, well-connected in this country taking advantage of farm programs, from pro athletes to everything else, who use the

farm program as a method, as a tax hedge, and use the supplemental systems, by eliminating direct payments, you have done a great deal.

I am all for crop insurance. I think it ought to be a little more costly and spread around. I think crop insurance in terms of the commissions paid to the people who sell it are a little too rich. There are a lot of people who would like to have that book of business for a whole lot less money. We have not done that. It will be a balance to me as I look at improvements.

I congratulate the chairman and ranking member for making progress on the farm bill. We have a long way to go. This amendment relates to one of those, which is how do we I make sure, if we are going to take taxpayer money and help people with their needs under the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, how do we make sure we are doing it in a way that actually gives them nutritious food?

As a physician who has cared for obesity and heart disease and cancer and high blood pressure for years, diet is a big factor on that. Senator Harkin and I have an amendment together, this amendment, which would create a pilot project in two States to allow States to use a nutrition assessment for setting what can be brought with SNAP. That is what this amendment does.

A lot of the companies do not like it. A lot of people say: How can you do that? But I remind our colleagues, for many of the people who do not buy nutritious food when we are helping them, we are paying for it twice. That is because when they make poor choices with our money to buy their food, they are creating disease categories that we are going to pay for in the future, with our money, for their disease.

So the idea of trying a pilot project in two States where they use nutritional value to make a determination of what food products are eligible and what are not for the SNAP program, this is a try that most people out in the country would like to see.

Most Americans want to help anybody who needs help, but I hear it all the time when people say: I see people buying stuff I don't buy or I can't afford to buy with their SNAP card.

There is no good way to do that other than do it on a nutritional basis. That is the only way we should look at that. If we are going to help somebody we ought to help them.

There is a great book by Marvin Olasky. It is called ``The Tragedy of American Compassion.'' He talks about how to help people. You do not help people by giving them a blank check. You help people in short term. You help them as long as they have a need. But you help them in a way that they get to help themselves and by that they get to help themselves and get their dignity back.

Senator Harkin and I have agreed that this is a pilot project that will have to be evaluated at the end of 2 years. All the costs of it have to be borne by the States. We have checked out all the computer companies. There is no problem in putting limitations on UPC codes or anything on all the checkout items. It is not an issue. We have done all the homework on it.

It would be interesting to see, once we do a nutritional evaluation and a limitation on SNAP products, what would happen to the health of the people we are helping. That is the amendment he and I have worked on together. We would love to see it go. We think it is time for that to happen. It certainty will be good.

The key is, can we help people get back to being self-reliant? I don't want us to be a big brother, but I also want to make sure the money we are stealing from our kids, from their future, actually does help somebody and doesn't hurt them.

With that, I again congratulate both the chairman and ranking member for the bill they brought. It has marked improvements. I thank them for their patience dealing with me today on the floor. I very much regret that you have objected to a way to move this bill forward because it doesn't just have implications for this bill. The courage to stand up and say let's do that will have great implications for how this body functions for the next 16 months. I think we are going to miss a big opportunity if we do not do that.

I would love to see the Senate go back to operating the way it did when I first came here. My hopes were dashed, however, with that objection.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, 4 percent of the farmers in this country receive 33 percent of the benefits from crop insurance. I don't think it could be said any better than Senator Durbin has said it. The point is, what we ought do is make sure there is a safety net, and crop insurance is the way to do that. But like every other program, we eventually are going to ask those who have more to participate more.

I have the location and how much the top five farmers in this country actually get. The No. 1 farmer in the country gets $1.9 million worth of subsidies a year. All we are going to do is cut his subsidy to $1.6 million. His income is far in excess of $750,000.

The No. 2 farmer is from Washington State. We will cut his subsidy from $1.7 million to $1.4 million, and, of course, he made far more than that in the last year and in the previous years.

No. 3, located in Minnesota, we are going to cut from $1.6 million to $1.4 million. We are still going to subsidize $1.4 million a year for this one individual who is going to make in excess of $2 million this year.

All we are asking is to appropriately limit the benefits that are coming from borrowed money against our children's future for the very wealthy in this country.

I reserve the remainder of my time.

The No. 1 person who cares about the environmental quality of their land is the farmer. The bigger the farmer, the more they care.

The No. 4 farmer, as far as crop insurance in the country, farms 105,000 acres. The average farmer in Oklahoma has 160 acres. They will make an economic decision, and if a 15-percent bump in their premium will cause them to go out, they will go out. But they will not go out because it is too much of a sweetheart deal. We are still going to pay almost half of their crop insurance--50 percent.

Does anybody else have that kind of deal going? Nobody else has that kind of deal going.

What we are saying is, let's save some money and ask those who are more well endowed with benefits and profits to pay a fairer share of what they should be paying based on the benefits they get.

The one thing the chairwoman didn't say is these are the guys who collect the big bucks when there is one. They do pay a portion of it, but their payouts are hundreds of times higher than the average farmer.

They will make an economic decision, and they are not going to walk away from this because it is still--even at 48 percent--too sweet of a deal for any of them to walk away. There is no study that says they will walk away.

Wait and see. If they walk away, Senator Durbin and I will walk down and offer mea culpas on the Senate floor.

Madam President, how much time remains?

Let me just make the point. The large farmers I know in Oklahoma really don't want the government telling them what kind of agreement they are going to have with their crop insurance and environmental things. We already have a ton of rules.

What I do know is there is nobody in Oklahoma who cares more about the environment than our farmers. I disagree there is a disconnect if we limit

the crop insurance subsidy to the very large farmers in Oklahoma and that they are not going to do what is in the best interests of the environment since it is a benefit to their own economic well-being.

We understand a deal was cut to get us to where we are on the bill, and we are not trying to disturb that. We don't want to disturb that, but we cannot continue to subsidize the very well heeled in this country to the same level that we try to protect those who are marginal. We just cannot do it.

We could have made this a whole lot different. We could have lowered it even lower. We didn't do that. The average median family income in this country is less than $60,000. We are talking about almost 15 times more than the average family in this country makes, and saying: If you make more than that, maybe you could take a little trim off the subsidy of your crop insurance. That is not an unfair question.

I yield to my colleague from Illinois.

Madam President, I ask for the yeas and nays on our amendment and yield back our time.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, we are still in morning business, and I will speak in morning business about two amendments I will call up when we leave morning business. One is amendment No. 815 on this bill, which is aimed at lessening State dependence on the Federal Government.

We have now, over the period of 50 years, helped with beach nourishment. In this bill is a section that extends from 50 to 65 years of government subsidization of beach nourishment. Really, if we look at the section, we see it is targeted toward a few States because they are running into the 50-year deadline. So all the amendment does is block it from going from 50 to 65 years.

The Clinton administration, the Bush administration, the Obama administration, the Obama fiscal commission, all recommended eliminating the Federal subsidization of beach nourishment projects. So we have great bipartisan leadership on both sides of the aisle to bring this back, put back to the States what is truly a State responsibility.

What we are doing in this bill is furthering the dependence of States for beach nourishment projects on the Federal Government. So I will call up that amendment.

The next amendment is amendment No. 816. This committee has done a great job in setting up a review board that can eliminate authorized projects that no longer make sense, but they have limited what they can look at. They are not letting them look at the whole of water resources projects; therefore, they limit those projects. All we are saying with this amendment is we ought to reopen it.

One of the criticisms of this amendment is that a project may be in the midst of completion and the review board might say we should eliminate it. It doesn't mean we will eliminate it because in the wisdom of the committee, they gave the opportunity for Congress to disallow any of this.

So I think what the committee has done is a great step forward in getting rid of projects that are no longer apropos to whatever the needs are: But my question is, Why did they limit it to such a narrow package when, in fact, they want this outside input to help guide us on what we should do?

So at the appropriate time, when we are out of morning business, I will call up those amendments. I will not speak further on them; I will just call them up so we can move ahead with the bill.

I see the chairman of the committee is here. Good morning to her, and I yield the floor.

Mr. President, I ask to set aside the pending amendment and call up amendment No. 815.

Mr. President, I ask to set aside the pending amendment and call up amendment No. 816.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

Mr. President, I have a question for the chairman through the Chair, if I might.

My question on the deauthorizing commission would be why would they not take into consideration all of the things the Senator just mentioned before they would recommend deauthorizing a program, if, in fact, the only reason they would not deauthorize it was because it was spending money that is not going to have a positive purpose.

So my question is, you trust the deauthorizing committee for all these other areas, but you do not trust their judgment to look at projects that are ongoing. Why would we think they would not make a positive decision in the best interests of the country?

The point I would make is the following: The big problem with WRDA bills is they become parochial in nature. So what we have excluded is everything since 1996 forward, which actually includes the present Members of Congress in terms of projects, their parochial wishes. So what we have done is we have said: You may not be capable of defunding or deauthorizing something else, but if it is new, you do not have the opportunity to do that. So what we are doing is we are protecting interests.

I yield back.

I ask for the yeas and nays.

Madam President, I ask for the yeas and nays on my amendment.

Amendment No. 816 expands the review commission so that, in fact, it can look at everything. We have given them the responsibility.

What the bill does is a great first step, but it protects all the earmarks from 1996 forward, so we are not going to look at any of those. We are not going to allow the review commission, the deauthorizing commission, to make recommendations on everything. We are going to select what they will look at.

If we trust them to look at the other things, we ought to trust them to look at all of it. We do have an opportunity to turn them down if, in fact, they are trying to deauthorize something the Congress thinks shouldn't be deauthorized.

I ask for the yeas and nays.

Madam President, as ranking member on the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, I know there are a lot of problems with FEMA and the Stafford grant, but this is essentially an earmark for an improvement before FEMA has even determined whether it is going to give mitigation grant money to the State of Vermont.

We need to do a lot in the way of changes with FEMA and grants and the Stafford grant monies. We know that, and we are working on that in Homeland Security. But this starts a process that sets a precedent that will be terrible. This is nothing right now but an earmark for one area, to benefit one State, when we need to make improvements in the whole process.

I hope my colleagues will look at the big picture rather than the small picture, and I ask for the yeas and nays.

Madam President, first of all, I thank my colleagues for the opportunity to have regular order in the Senate. The ranking member of the committee would like to have 2 minutes before I start.

The only thing I am chairman of, Madam President, is my dogs at home, but I thank the Presiding Officer for that misquote.

At this time, I call up Coburn amendment No. 805.

Madam President, I ask unanimous consent that reading of the amendment be dispensed with.

A couple of years ago I added an amendment in our deliberative process that gave Americans their constitutional rights in the U.S. National Forest. There were two main reasons I did that.

No. 1, the amount of murders, rapes, robberies, and assaults were rising; and No. 2, there is some confusion with the conceal and carry State laws.

We have 35 or 36 States that have conceal and carry State laws, but when someone accidentally walks onto U.S. forest land, they are actually violating Federal law even though they might not know they are on State land versus Federal land.

I would note that since that time the amount of crime in our national parks has declined. So since then, we now have, throughout the country, the same approach we have in national parks on the Bureau of Land Management areas, the Forest Service, the National Park Service, and the National Wildlife Refuge.

The reason this is important for the Corps of Engineers is because after we passed those amendments, the corps proactively stated that none of this applied to them. Well, the fact is the corps has more visitors every year on their 422 lake and river projects, 11.7 million acres, 95,000 camp sites, and 6,500 miles of trails, and they have more than 370 million visitors. Corps projects are the most visited of any single Federal agency sites--even more than the 280 million annual visitors to our national parks.

Americans who camp, hunt, or fish on these federally managed lands are prevented from exercising their Second Amendment rights that have been guaranteed by the Supreme Court, but also are under the jurisdiction of their State laws.

The purpose of this amendment is so law-abiding citizens who are granted the authority in their State will not be vulnerable to criminals or dangerous wildlife while on Army Corps land, and we, in fact, will ensure they have their rights guaranteed. This does not include an exemption for Federal facilities, Army Corps headquarters, research facilities, lock or dam buildings, or any other significant infrastructure associated with the corps. This amendment would simply require the Corps of Engineers to follow State firearm possession laws on lands and waters managed by them--the same approach the Bureau of Land Management, the Forest Service, the National Parks, and the National Wildlife Refuges use.

It is a simple issue. This is the only area of Federal lands now where we put people in double jeopardy if they are accidentally on corps land; they are violating Federal law even though they are complying with their State laws. They are totally in compliance with the State laws, but if they step one foot onto corps land, they are violating corps regulations. This amendment makes it consistent across all government lands--we have already done it everywhere else--the corps land, which is the most visited, the most utilized lands we have in the country. It is straightforward.

I am very appreciative of the chairman of this committee for her cooperation in allowing this amendment. As a matter of fact, I am so cooperative I am not going to offer the other one so I can help move her bill forward. I congratulate her on the bipartisan work she has done on her committee.

I think this is a principled stand. The question is, Why should we not have the same policy everywhere, No. 1; and No. 2, Why would we dare deny the rights we give everywhere else on Federal Government-owned land--why would we do something different on corps land?

I actually wouldn't even be offering this had the corps not proactively stated that what we passed did not apply to them. We actually intended for it to apply and, technically, they could get out. All we are saying is let's make it the same everywhere, so you can follow State law, be a good, law-abiding citizen; but if a person happens to walk onto corps land, they are violating a Federal statute according to the corps. Not on BLM lands, not on Forest Service lands, not in the Parks, but if a person walks up to a lake in Oklahoma that is run by the corps, they are violating Federal law but they are not violating State law. So we ought to have consistency with our law. This is about consistency, good government, and common sense. Wouldn't it be a tragedy--and it happens all the time--that a person is on a campsite in Oklahoma and because there is no law allowing that person to carry their weapon onto that campsite, they are vulnerable to the prey of people who are going to violate that law. That is exactly what was happening in the national parks. We were having women raped, we were having people murdered, we were having people accosted and robbed. Guess what. That has all markedly declined since we allowed gun owners to carry their guns. There has not been, to my knowledge, one case of an inappropriate use by a law-abiding citizen of their weapons in those areas. So it is common sense.

My hope is we will pass this amendment and have a consistent law on all Federal lands so people can be protected under the Second Amendment, people can follow their State's law and do it adequately and accurately and be great law-abiding citizens.

With that, I reserve the remainder of my time.

Madam President, first of all, our amendment exempts the areas the chairman talked about--locks and dams. All those areas are exempt from this amendment. As ranking member on Homeland Security, I know more about these issues than probably anybody other than our chairman and the past chairman and ranking member in terms of the safety.

The people the chairman talks about do not care what the law is now. They do not care what the law is. So the people about whom we are going to be worried--Boston has pretty tight laws. They did not care what the laws were. They broke multiple sets of laws, as we saw what happened in Boston. We have to prepare for that regardless of whether this amendment goes through.

I would also note, in several of our national parks we have corps land where we have hydroelectric facilities and we have these things. We have not had any problem with that. What we have had is a marked decline in the number of rapes and a marked decline in the number of murders in national parks since we instituted the State laws in national parks for guns.

On campgrounds we do have problems with rapes, with accosts, with assaults, with robberies; and we do have murders on corps land and campgrounds. So the point is, standardizing where you can go--I would also make the point, we only allow State law to apply. If Oklahoma law is different than California law, it is not Oklahoma law, it is whatever California law is and recognizing that individual right so we do not put people in jeopardy when they accidentally get on corps land.

I understand her inhibition toward it, toward any expression of the Second Amendment generally. But the fact is we ought to have a common policy in all areas. We already do it in Bureau of Land Management, we already do it in the Forest Service, we already do it in national parks. So we should not exempt the corps.

The fact is, the people who are going to violate our laws are not the law-abiding citizens. They are not the law-abiding citizens. It does not matter what we do; they are not going to pay attention to what we do. The one thing we have proven in the National Parks is, when we allowed people the ability to carry and follow their own State's law in terms of their Second Amendment, we saw rapes go down, we saw murders go down, we saw assaults go down, and we saw robberies go down in the national parks.

The same thing will happen on corps land. Most of the people will not carry. Most of the people will not come in. But to deny the ability to do that, that is what this amendment is about.

I will be happy to debate the Senator further. The fact is, there is a big difference in our view of what the Second Amendment should be about in this country and our trusting of law-abiding citizens to do the right things. Her issue on critical infrastructure--we are doing everything we can do to protect that now and building toward the ultimate goals of where we need to be, and this is not going to change our approach. It is not going to change it at all. So I would dispute the fact that it is going to change our approach.

As we look at critical infrastructure and the protection of it, we are going to do the same whether or not this amendment passes. It is not going to have any impact on it.

My hope would be that since I actually have withdrawn the other amendment we would yield back the time and move to Senator Whitehouse's amendment as soon as we can.

With that, I reserve the remainder of my time.

I will be happy to get it for the Senator.

Will the Senator yield?

I will get the Senator the actual statute.

Federal structures are covered under another statute and I will get that statute for it. The reason we did not specifically represent that is because they are already covered. We did not exclude those structures. We said: Corps land. We did not specifically say that, and we will get you the code where Federal structures are excluded.

Madam President, I do not have any intention of withdrawing the amendment. There is a Federal statute that already prohibits the carrying of firearms in Federal buildings and structures, and we will get the Senator the statute. That is very clear. We were advised by legislative counsel we did not have to put that in there because it is already prohibited. I will challenge the statement of the CRS and will give the Senator the section of the code that provides that.

Again, the point is, this critical infrastructure is already being beefed up. We are going to be doing that in Homeland Security. We are doing that in Homeland Security, and it has no bearing whatsoever on the Second Amendment right to unify our policies across all government- owned land in this country.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, I would yield back the remainder of my time if the chairman of the committee would do as well.

I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

I ask unanimous consent to speak as in morning business.

I wanted to spend a minute as we have had a lot of discussions over the pain that is being caused by the American traveling public and businesses on the FAA. We heard the majority leader say we couldn't do the sequester because we still have the same amount of money, and there is no way we could cut the $40 billion out of our budget over the next 6 months.

I thought I would just draw a little comparison for us so we could actually see the Federal budget, and then we could make a comparison to the average family budget. Here is the Federal budget. This is last year's Federal budget. We spent $3.7 trillion, we took in $2.46 trillion, and we had a deficit of $1.32 trillion. We added to our total debt, so we have come to a total debt now of $17.57 trillion. The sequester cuts are $85 billion, and $85 billion sounds like a lot of money.

Now let's compare it to the average family household in America. The median household income in America last year was $53,000. By the way, in real dollars that is less than what it was in 1989--less than what it was in 1989.

If we spent money in households the way the Federal Government spends money, we would have spent $81,000. We would have only earned $53,000, but we would have spent $81,000. We would have had an annual credit card debt that we would have chalked up of $28,000 doing exactly what the Federal Government does, which would have made our total credit card debt $375,000.

We are spending $81,000, and if we cut the amount of spending in the sequester as a percentage of the total Federal budget as to the median family income in America, we would have cut $182. That kind of puts it in perspective.

How many families would continue to be able to operate this way? They wouldn't. No credit card company would continue to give them $28,000 worth of credit card debt. They certainly wouldn't let them run up $375,000 and then say: Oh, by the way, what are you doing about getting your finances in order? Your response would be: I have cut $182 out of my budget this next year.

What we are seeing is a farce when we talk about we can't cut $44 billion or $88 billion out of the Federal budget over a year's period. It is an absolute farce.

Then when you talk about the FAA, in fact, they have less controllers now than they did in 2010. If you look at the budget requested in 2013, there is about a $300 million difference between the sequester level and, actually, it is the same as in 2010.

What the FAA and the administration are telling us is there is no way they can possibly do anything to associate less inconvenience and less delayed flights. Yesterday there were 6,800 flights delayed to make it hurt.

I want to enter something into the Record that came up on my whistleblower site. This is an employee of the FAA and what they were told in a meeting on Monday by management. Here is what they were told.

``I hope this is the appropriate channel to contact you through.'' I am not going to say who works for the FAA and asked me to e-mail you. We want to ``let you know that the FAA management has stated in meetings that they need to make the furloughs as hard as possible for the public so that they understand how serious it is. Due to this there is management trying to make everyone take the same furlough day so that the FAA shuts down completely on that day. Union employees are supposed to be able to pick their furlough day, but are being pushed by management to take the same day as everyone else. Example, recently there was a meeting between''--and I am not going to say between which group of employees, but at the FAA, ``management, and union where the union reminded a manager that he cannot force them to take off the same day. A union employee wants Wednesdays off so another employee, under the managers orders, tried to make the union employee change his mind. When the union employee asked why, the other employee said to prove a point. I do not know if any of this information is useful or not. If it is I'' will contact you with more information.

Well, the fact is, if that is really going on, that the management at FAA is trying to make union employees all take the same day off, what is that about? Is that about airline travel in America or is that trying to make the sequester hurt? Is that about $182 out of your budget and we can't even do that?

We have the government's management manipulating a program so that it hurts the American public? How cynical, how un-American is that.

I would ask unanimous consent to submit this e-mail for the Record.

Here is another from an FAA supervisor: I am an air traffic control supervisor. I am writing you because I don't want to lose my job but, more importantly, I don't want to see safety across the Nation be deteriorated at the risk of the lives of aviators. Sir, I don't need to remind you about the importance of safety and would like to talk to you about what could have happened on the day OSU played OU 16 February 2013. Please call me day or night.

The fact is there is a bigger story behind that, which I will make a speech on tomorrow, to actually detail what is going on.

When we hear there is no risk to safety, and here is a supervisor saying there is, what are we doing? This is a contrived farce to make the American people think we can't cut $182 out of an $81,000 budget, put in simple family budget terms, or we can't cut $85 billion out of a $3.7 trillion budget.

When we get down and look at it in those terms, everybody in America knows it is possible to do that. Everybody knows all it takes is some common sense and the utilization of priorities that are in the best interests of the country, not the best interest of any political party or political philosophy, to actually accomplish this.

I must say I am disappointed in the Department of Transportation. I am disappointed in the FAA that they would be so callous as to carry this forward.

I also want to make some comments about the remarks of the majority leader 2 days ago about the tea party. I have to say I adamantly disagree. The tea party people I know from Oklahoma and the Midwest love our country. They want an effective, efficient government. They want a government that follows the Constitution. They want the rule of law to be supported all the time.

He related and compared them to anarchists. Nothing could be further from the truth. Are there some crazy opinions on both sides of the extremes in both parties? You bet. But the vast majority of people in America understand over the last few years they have had to do more with less at the same time the government is doing less with more.

To indict a group of people who care just as much about this country but see a different way of solving the problems, who say we should live within our means, that we shouldn't borrow against our children's future, that we should follow the Constitution, that we should follow the enumerated powers, that we should honor the Bill of Rights--that we should honor the Bill of Rights asking us to do the very things that our oath calls on us to do--to me, the fact that the majority leader would attack that group of people as a class and relate their motives to that of anarchy is very shameful. They even make the comparison, but it is also made out of ignorance.

Everybody in this country wants the best in the long term. There is a difference in our view of how we get there, but there is no difference that we do have a Constitution, and it is not un-American to think we ought to honor our oath to that Constitution; that we ought to truly follow the Bill of Rights and not pass laws that abandon it; that we truly ought to embrace the enumerated powers.

Over the last 3 years the GAO has shown us where $250 billion a year in waste is, and yet the Congress has done nothing. Senator Feinstein and I eliminated $6 billion a year in terms of the ethanol blenders credit. That is the only thing that has gone through in 3 years that even comes close to addressing what the GAO has recommended out of $250 billion.

You can understand why people might be cynical of Washington--because we don't have our nose pointed in the right direction. We continue to pass laws that ignore the enumerated powers.

One of the results of that is $250 billion of duplicative programs which have no true metrics on them. If they were all working, that would be fine. But, in fact, most aren't.

I think it needs to be countered that there are a lot of disparate views in our country, but the motivation behind them is really love of country. Whether they are on the hard left or on the hard right, it is just a different path. To compare that group of people to anarchists is both insensitive, inaccurate, and outrageous. What we need in our country today is leadership that pulls us together, not leadership that divides us further. What we are seeing is just the opposite.

I would ask my fellow Americans if they think on a comparative basis we couldn't cut $182 out of an $81,000 budget, if that is too much, especially since the fact that this budget has grown 89 percent in the last 10 years while their income has gone down 5 percent. Which is the better way? Should we raise your taxes and spend more of your money or should we actually decrease and eliminate tremendous amounts of wasteful, ineffective, and inefficient government spending and not sacrifice the future of our children?

I don't think the answer is complicated. I think most of America would agree that we could get $182 out of $81,000. That is the comparative ratio of $85 billion out of $3.7 trillion and what we heard the majority leader say that is impossible to do. It is only impossible to do this because we don't want to do it.

I have spent 8 years outlining waste in the Federal Government. Very few of my colleagues have helped eliminate that waste. The reason is they are double minded. In their hearts they want the best for the country, but they also want to get reelected. Every one of those duplicative, wasteful programs has a constituency.

So parochialism trumps patriotism in the Senate. That is the only explanation for why we haven't addressed

what the GAO has plainly said is duplication, waste, and actual stupidity.

When we have over 100 job training programs, 47 for the nondisabled, and all but 3 of them do exactly the same thing, and most of those do not have a metric--in fact, none of them have a metric to say whether they are effective--and we will not reform it, we are saying we do not care; we cannot cut $182.

When we have 110 teacher training programs, and none of those has a metric, across 9 different agencies, not in the Department of Education, and none of those has a metric. We spend about $4 billion a year on them, and we do not know if they are effective and we will not conform them into 1, even if it is a role for the Federal Government, or into 2, and eliminate and get some consolidated savings, what we are saying is we cannot cut $182 out of an $81,000 budget.

You see, the problems are not insolvable. There is no attempt being made to solve them. So we get a choice, America gets a choice: Continue to operate as we are, and what we are actually going to do is put handcuffs on our children and shackle their legs and take away the opportunity of a life equal to ours. We are stealing that from them.

When we have the majority leader of the Senate say it is impossible for us to cut $182 out of an $81,000 budget, what we are saying is our priorities are wrong. I can go through the list. We have 204 science, technology, engineering, and math programs. Twenty-one different agencies run those. Half of them are at the Defense Department. None of them has a metric to see if they are working. They are well intended. Why do we have 204 science and technology programs? Nobody can answer that question. We just have them because somebody saw a need but did not look to see what we were already doing or make what we were already doing work. It is not rocket science. It is common sense. There is not a thimbleful of it in Washington. There is not a thimbleful of common sense in Washington; otherwise, we would be addressing these programs. We would not have a statement saying there is no way we can cut $85 billion out of a $3.7 trillion budget. America does not believe that.

Now we have sequester and a refusal by the administration to even accept flexibility if we were to grant it, or any request for reprogramming to make it better for the American people. What we have is a political stunt by the FAA that not only inconveniences travelers but puts people at risk, markedly affects business, and changes people's lives. When you think about those people who are not going to make the funeral of one of their loved ones because of this stunt or are not going to be at a graduation because of this stunt or the airlines and the significant losses they are incurring every day because of this stunt, you have got to ask: Who in the world is leading this country and where did they get their motivation? It is an embarrassment.

The fact is the Senate has not acted in the best interests of the country in the long term, and what we have denied--the fact is we cannot cut $182 out of an $81,000 budget. We cannot do that; it is too hard. But nobody in America believes that. Nobody believes it. So what we do is call up all of the heart-wrenching things we can to say how terrible it is but do not talk about the real fact that we are living way outside of our means. We are living on the backs of our children. Every day we are stealing their future and we refuse to admit to the very real concept that that is morally wrong. It is especially morally wrong when we, if we did our jobs properly, would not be doing it.

I yield the floor and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, I understand there are going to be objections to amendments, but I am going to offer them anyway and let people object. One of the ways the Senate is running now is that we have spent 3 days doing nothing, so I am going to talk about my amendments. If they get objected to, fine. But the fact is the American people should know what we are doing rather than spending all our time in quorum calls.

So I will be calling up several amendments. If they are objected to, I will spend the time talking about those amendments. I have no intention of losing the floor until I have finished calling up all my amendments and talking about each of them.

I just gave a talk on the tremendous waste that is in this government, but there is a lot of other waste and ways to solve it. Most of these amendments have bipartisan sponsors or have had in the past, and they are about good government. I understand there will be objections, and that is fine. Members can defend the objection and the fact that there are not going to be any amendments on the bill, but I am going to offer mine anyway.

The first amendment I would like to call up is amendment No. 753 and I ask unanimous consent for its consideration.

I will discuss amendment No. 753, and I appreciate the objection by the Senator from Illinois to that amendment.

We have over $4 billion owed to the Federal Government by Federal employees in past due taxes. I am not talking about taxes that have been adjudicated or settled or that have been worked out. I am talking about taxes owed today that haven't been paid. The Federal Government has the ability to garnish those wages, but they will not.

The way we get rid of a $1 trillion deficit is $1 billion at a time. On active Federal employees right now there is $1.1 billion in tax arrears and $2.2 billion from retired. That is undisputed. I am not talking about disputed. This is undisputed and hasn't been paid. So if there is an agreement that has been worked out, if they are working it out, that is fine, this amendment does nothing.

We are laying off people at the FAA. A portion of these people at the FAA, whether it be in communications or a secretary or whatever, owes the Federal Government thousands of dollars, but we are asking somebody else to take a furlough day rather than either terminating this other individual or garnishing their wages. Something is wrong with that picture.

This amendment says we are going to do that. We are going to actually enforce the rule of law and we will apply it equally to Federal employees as we apply it to everybody else in this country.

This will save, over the next 2 to 3 years, about $3 billion. Yet I can't bring up this amendment. I understand the dynamics that are ongoing. I have no personal animosity toward Senator Baucus or Senator Durbin for objecting to the amendment. I know what is happening. But the fact is we can't bring up an amendment to save us $3 billion.

The Marketplace Fairness Act is going to pass this body. Everybody knows that. But what we can't do is the regular work of the American people and we can't get a vote on an amendment that would actually save us $3 billion.

I would be happy to yield to my colleague from Illinois.

I understand that, but I think this amendment has no technical problem because it does not raise new revenues. It is simply a direction for performance of the Federal Government, which is the marketplace fairness. We are directing what will happen to the States and the involvement of the Federal Government in it. So there may very well be a blue-slip problem with some of the others, but I don't think there is with this one.

The point is here we sit. I just gave a speech saying it is $182 out of a $81,000 budget we say we can't cut. That is the equivalent family situation I just lined up here, and here is a way to get $3.2 billion that is owed and due back into the Federal coffers and we are not going to allow it.

So we could allow the amendment and then table it. The fact is we don't want to do that either. In talking to my House colleagues, it is going to be a while, if ever, if this bill actually sees the light of day. So we ought to be voting on the things that will actually make a difference.

I don't disagree it is unfair on the Marketplace Fairness Act. I think the exclusion level is way too low for any business to be able to afford to comply with it, but that is another story. The very fact is we are not doing what we could do to collect the revenue we are due now. This is an example of just saying: Start enforcing the law. Start using the tools at hand at the Treasury and the different agencies. Yet we are not going to get to vote on that. We ought to vote. If they want to table it, fine, but not to allow an amendment to come up? We are not postcloture, but we are not allowing an amendment, which means I don't have the right to modify a bill or even have a vote on modifying the bill.

I understand what is going on, but I think that is a significant amendment. Most Americans don't know Federal employees who are actively working today owe that kind of money to the Federal Government. Yet nothing is being done about it and no consequence for not paying. I guarantee if you are out there and you are not paying, you are feeling the full force of the IRS.

I ask unanimous consent to bring up amendment No. 751 and set aside the pending amendment.

Can I actually have it read and then the Senator from Illinois object after having it read?

All right. Let me explain a minute, and the Senator can object ahead of time or later. It doesn't matter when.

This is an amendment to require a report from the Treasury Department on the abuse of tax-exempt status by charitable organizations. What we have seen in studies by the GAO and the IG is that many professional athletes set up charitable organizations and then use them inappropriately to pay the expenses of their lives. All we are asking from the IRS is to take a good look at this. Let's not allow this aspect of a very well-intended tax law to be utilized to skirt expenses and taxes.

On March 31, 2015, ESPN investigative unit ``Outside the Lines'' released the findings of an in-depth look at 115 different charitable organizations founded by prominent athletes. They gave extensive details of that investigation. What they outlined was that 74 percent of these nonprofits fell short of one or more of the acceptable guidelines for nonprofit operating standards. That means they are operating outside the law or do not meet the requirements for a charitable organization. Yet nothing has been done about it.

Here again they are asking for oversight, asking for us to do the right thing, asking us to get the money that is actually due the Federal Government. We are not going to get a vote on it. We are not going to have an ability to vote on it. We are not going to direct the IRS to actually do that and actually recapture some of the money that is actually due to the Federal Government.

All it is is a study: Tell us how bad this problem is and what you are going to do about it. How are you going to fix it? But, no, we are not going to do that. We are going to continue to allow the process to go on so that some of the most wealthy people in our country continue to pay less taxes than what they owe because Congress is dysfunctional.

I am not going into the individuals who were named in the ESPN story. I think it created quite a stir in the media. Yet we have seen no action either in the House or the Senate in this area. All we are asking with this amendment is the number of charitable organizations that existed 10 years ago; the number that had their tax-exempt status revoked each year since 2007; the number and nature of the allegations of the problems made to the Internal Revenue Service with respect to charitable organizations that were founded in this area of expertise for charitable organizations and what the IRS has done about it over the last 6 years; a description of the challenges the Internal Revenue Service faces in trying to enforce and oversee such organizations; the number of criminal investigations of charitable organizations conducted by the IRS since 2010--in other words, what are you doing about the problem--and then finally an explanation of any problems the Internal Revenue Service has had with the U.S. attorneys in prosecuting criminal violations of tax-exempt and charitable organizations.

I am happy to.

I appreciate the comments of my colleague, and question.

The next amendment I would like to call up is amendment No. 767, which requires all legislation to be reviewed before it is considered by the Senate to determine whether duplicative or overlapping programs are created. I ask that that amendment be called up and the pending amendment be set aside.

Here is one that doesn't get anything as far as a blue slip. What we now have is 3 years' worth of reports by the General Accountability Office showing at least $250 billion in questionable programs that are markedly duplicative of one another. This is multiple areas, and I have them now memorized and all the new ones too. It is layer after layer, agency after agency, program after program.

This is a bipartisan amendment. All this says is that before we create another program in the Senate, we have a report from the Congressional Research Service: Does this duplicate a program that is already out there? If we continue doing what we are doing, we are going to continue to get GAO reports that we are creating programs that duplicate what we are already doing.

It is not the fact that maybe our intent is good, it is the fact that we don't know what is out there now--except GAO does now--and how will we ever know until we put a requirement on ourselves to quit creating new duplicative programs? What the commonsense man would say is that if you have programs that are doing things and they are not working, don't create another one, fix the ones you have. Yet we

refuse to do that. Committee after committee refuses to do the oversight.

There is a bill sitting right now awaiting our determination, coming from the House, that reformed 36 job-training programs that the GAO said were failing and were duplicative and didn't have the metrics, and they converted those to 6, 36 out of 47 because the committee that did this, the SKILLS Act, only had jurisdiction over them. They created six programs, and they put metrics on it. We spend $19.8 billion on those 47 programs. We are going to achieve wonderful savings. But the most important thing we are going to do with the SKILLS Act is we are actually going to give somebody a skill with the money we spend rather than wasting 80 percent in the job-training programs we have, and that is what the oversight says. When you look at it, that is what it says.

For us to not continue adding to the problem, this is an amendment-- it does not have a blue slip problem, so what is wrong with considering this amendment? I ask my colleague, what is wrong with considering this amendment? This is common sense. It works. It will actually cause us to not do stupid things in the future. It will actually help us to be better stewards of the public's money. Yet we are going to object to bringing it up.

I will be happy to yield.

I thank my colleague. I will make my mark on what I am going to reoffer in the future.

I ask unanimous consent to call up amendment No. 766 and have the pending amendment set aside.

I am happy to let the Senator object ahead of time, as he obviously is going to.

Every 4 years the Federal Government spends $200 million so both political parties can have a party. We are $17.4 trillion in debt as we speak at this moment. That is $50 million a year. The way to get rid of a billion-dollar debt is $50 million at a time. The way to get rid of a trillion-dollar debt is $1 billion at a time. Do we really have the capability right now to borrow $200 million every 4 years for parties for the Democratic and Republican conventions and charge it to our children? All this does is put in a prohibition that we are not ever going to do that again. That is not a wise expenditure of taxpayer money. It is probably not constitutional. It has never been challenged. It certainly does not fall within the enumerated powers of the Constitution, article I, section 8. So it is another way of saving us some money.

I would just repeat my point. We have the FAA out there intentionally causing pain and harm to the American public today, and we have the Senate intentionally not doing what will solve those problems-- intentionally not doing what will solve those problems. We are not trying to find the waste. We are not offering bills to eliminate the waste. We are not offering bills to eliminate duplication. We are not trying to refine programs to make them better. We are not trying to save Medicare and we are not trying to save Social Security--the very things that are very important in terms of what is getting ready to happen to us.

We cannot point to the administration and say they are cynical without pointing to ourselves as well. Here is $200 million that we spend every 4 years. Why don't we quit spending it? If the political parties--I have never been to a political convention in my life, but if they want to have a party, they ought to pay for it and we should not charge it to Dick Durbin's grandkids or Mike Enzi's grandkids or Tom Coburn's grandkids or anybody else's grandkids, which is what we are doing.

We are probably not going to get a vote on this amendment either, which shows again that our focus is not on what is most important for our country; our focus is on us. We have not set about to solve the big problems for our country.

This is a no-brainer. There are not many people other than those people in the political hierarchy of each party who would be against this. Yet it is not even going to get a vote. What does that say to the American people? Sure, it is only $200 million. Two hundred million dollars. Two hundred thousand thousands. We talk about millions as if they are nothing. Most of our fellow citizens will have trouble making that amount of money in their lifetime, and we flip it off as nothing.

This is a simple amendment. It has been objected to. I understand. I have no animosity toward my colleague. I understand what is going on. But do we really want to solve problems for the American people or do we just want to play this game some more? It is disturbing. It has to be disturbing to the average American.

In the last 5 years the average Oklahoma family has truly struggled to get by, and we have been one of the more fortunate States. But they made very hard choices about their priorities. They have had kids go to an instate school who didn't want to because they couldn't afford to go to an out-of-State school. They have driven a car 2 or 3 years longer than they wanted to and put money into an old automobile because they could not afford to go the other way. They have changed the way they enjoy themselves as a family because of what we have done. They have made hard choices. They have gone through the priorities in their lives and said: What is important based on the amount of money we have?

That is not just in Oklahoma; in every State in this country they have done that. Everybody has done that but the Federal Government--the Federal Government. And once we do take $182 out of a $150,000 family budget, which I showed an example of earlier, what we are told is, we can't do that. There is no way. It is impossible. We can't do that.

Then we have a demonstrated, overt exacerbation of something that was not caused by the sequester, that could have been averted, to prove a point that we cannot cut a penny from the Federal budget.

When $100 billion a year in Medicare and Medicaid fraud is ongoing in this country, we are talking about trimming the availability of Medicare services to seniors, and we have not solved that problem. We are not believable anymore; we are not trustworthy anymore.

This is a very simple, straightforward amendment. I know $200 million doesn't sound like much in Washington, but it is a ton in Muskogee, OK. I will offer my amendment again and there will be objections. What will probably happen is that I will not have a chance to offer it again because it is not germane to the bill, and then when we get postcloture, it will be ruled nongermane.

We will not have a chance for Senator Durbin or Senator Enzi to object in the future because of the rules we are operating under. We are not going to have any amendments until we get postcloture, which means everything I have talked about so far is not even going to be considered.

We could consider them. We could allow them to be voted on. We could demonstrate to the American people we are actually interested in trying to solve some of the problems up here, but we decided we will not do that. It is pretty frustrating to me as a Senator, but it has to be terribly disappointing to the average American.

I have just outlined about $5 billion worth of savings with the four amendments I have talked about. We are not going to get to vote on them. Now, $5 billion is almost Oklahoma's entire State budget for 1 year. This is easy, simple stuff to do. Mark my words, we will never vote on one of these amendments associated with this bill. Since we don't have real amendment opportunities anymore in the Senate, they

will only come forward when the majority leader decides he wants to vote on them. He has been very recalcitrant in offering to vote on hardly anything that will actually make a difference in our future in terms of finances.

I am going to talk about the other amendments I wish to bring up. I will not make the Senator from Illinois object to them, so I will just talk about them.

Amendment No. 29, which I will not call up, is an amendment on something I think is terribly unfair. If this amendment were passed, it would only save us $90 million a year. Does anyone realize the Professional Golfer's Association is a tax-free organization? They raise billions of dollars every year, but the money that goes into the PGA is tax free--that actually goes into the organization. They are a 501(c)6 tax-exempt organization. Not only does it include the PGA tour, it includes the National Football League, the National Hockey League, and it includes the LPGA.

Can anybody tell me why they are tax-exempt other than it is under a loophole we have created? So if they were not tax-exempt and they paid their taxes as other organizations that are in the business of making money, the IRS would collect about $95 million more a year from just these four organizations.

Professional baseball saw the light and gave this up. They said it was not right. They did it a number of years ago. They said it is not right. Yet we continue to allow the well-heeled in our country to take advantage of the Tax Code as we raise taxes on everybody else. I think this is something we ought to fix.

A lot of my colleagues on my side of the aisle don't like this. I think it is inherently unfair that the very profitable sports organizations in our country don't pay taxes on the income their parent organizations make. I am not saying they don't do some positive things.

The President talked about paying your fair share. This is one that is not fair. Let's make it fair. Let's collect that money. It is not going to make any difference in what they do.

There are a few more organizations to add to this list: The ATP, WTP, the U.S. Tennis Association, Professional Rodeo and Cowboy Association, the National Hot Rod Association, as well as the ones I mentioned earlier also get this benefit.

People say this is going to impact their teaching certification or their charitable activities. They already have a 501(c)3. All of these organizations have a 501(c)3. They have a (c)6 just so they don't have to pay taxes. They have a charitable organization for all of their charitable stuff as well as their certifications.

This amendment will take the extra $90-some million and give it back to the American people. By giving that money back, it is giving it back to our kids because that is $90 million we are not going to borrow against their future.

The final amendment I will mention is on subsidies for millionaires for gambling losses. I will admit to Senator Durbin that this one does have a blue slip. For anyone who reports $1 million in adjusted gross income a year in this country, they have an unlimited amount of gambling losses they can offset against that.

I am not a big fan of gambling. If it was a great business, we would all be gambling and be better off, but we are not. Most of us are losers when we try to gamble. The fact is the high rollers in this country get to deduct their gambling losses, and it is a large amount of money.

We also don't have any cutoff in terms of taking advantage of a lot of other expenses, which is for a speech another day, but here is one that is not necessarily great for society, yet we incentivize because we give an unlimited availability of deduction for the very wealthy. It ought to be something we change.

I will be happy to.

It is against gains in gambling. The Senator is correct.

Nevertheless, we give an advantage to those with an adjusted gross income of $1 million or more a year. What we have done is given the well-heeled and well-connected an advantage the average American citizen cannot do. I cannot recall, but this morning I read the exact amount of revenue. The point is it is the principle.

Over the next few months will--regardless of this bill, its outcome-- the Congress start addressing the real problems facing our country? We just passed $740 billion worth of increased income taxes and payroll taxes at the end of the year. Supposedly we will start cutting $85 billion over the next 12 months. We will see if that actually happens, as we have grown the government 89 percent over the last 10 years, while the average American family income has declined 5 percent over the same time.

I made the statement earlier--and it can be checked on any Web site-- if we go by inflation-adjusted dollars, the average American is where they were in 1989. If we look at the size of government, it is almost four times that size. It doesn't seem to me we are accomplishing a whole lot as far as elevating the prosperity of Americans, but we have certainly elevated the prosperity of the Federal Government, and we have certainly undermined the prosperity of our children.

I am worried about our country. I am worried about the loss of confidence in this body. I am worried about our abandonment of common sense. I am worried about the fact that we ignore the enumerated power and then we wonder why we get GAO reports that talk about the duplication and things that are not effective.

There is a great role for government in a lot of areas in this country, but in many areas we are not effective and certainly not efficient. The reasons our Founders put the enumerated power in was so the decisions that could be made on so many things would be made at the local level so it would be done effectively and efficiently.

When we have this year's GAO report showing that there is $98 billion worth of duplicative waste--$250 billion over the last 3 years of duplicative waste--and we don't do anything about it, what we are saying is it is not important. The future is not important, having the confidence of the American people is not important, our kids' future is not important, and don't worry, we will be able to pay all the debt back.

I will close with this: There are a lot of biblical principles about paying interest and going into debt. Last year we paid about $223 billion in interest costs. If we took our historical pattern over the last 30 years of what our interest is, we are actually paying the same interest we were 25 years ago on one-fourth the debt.

If we took our historical interest rate, which is about 5.88 percent, and applied it to where we are today, what we would see is our interest costs would be $880 billion a year. That is going to happen to us pretty soon. Nobody knows for sure when, but interest rates are not going to stay at zero for the Federal Government. We are not going to have the Federal Reserve continuing to print money, and if we do, then the value of our dollar is going to decline and we will all get taxed through the decrease in value of whatever we have or hold.

The point I want to make is that the interest payment doesn't help the poorest person in this country, it doesn't help the single mom, it doesn't help the kid in Head Start, it doesn't help our schools, it doesn't help our military, it doesn't help our foreign service. It doesn't help anybody except the person who has our debt.

Don't we have an obligation to not let that happen? Don't we have an obligation to start addressing the very real problems in front of us? Not one dollar we pay in interest helps anybody in America in the long- term net way.

Last year the Chinese dumped $250 trillion of our debt. We ought to ask ourselves why. Their perception is that as their currency appreciates, our currency is eventually going to depreciate.

As my friends in Oklahoma say, one of the reasons we are doing so well right now is we are the best-looking horse in the glue factory. We look good because everybody else is looking so bad. We are lulled into a position of thinking we, in fact, can get away with continuing to do what we have done for years in Washington when, in fact, we cannot.

I appreciate the time on the floor and my colleagues' consideration of my amendments. I understand what is happening. I am not happy about what is happening in the Senate. I think we ought to be working on solving real problems. They are the biggest problems in front of our country. Saving Medicare is important. In 13 months, Social Security disability is going to be out of money. Those people who are truly disabled are going to see a cut in their benefits. We are not going to be able to address that.

The time for us to be acting is now.

I yield the floor.

Madam President, reserving the right to object, and I plan to object, I will take some time to explain why I object.

What is happening in the Senate is phenomenal, and I want the American people to see this. The Federal Government is 89 percent bigger than it was 10 years ago. We just heard the majority leader say flexibility can't work because we are already dealing with the same amount of money--89 percent more than we were 10 years ago.

I didn't vote for the Budget Control Act. I think sequester is a stupid way to cut spending. But I want us to understand exactly what is going on. This is a contrived situation because no effort--zero effort--by the FAA or the Department of Transportation has been made to have any flexibility in terms of how they spend their money. They have made no request for a reprogramming of funds within the FAA. They have over $500 million unobligated sitting in balances that aren't obligated, so none of this had to happen. This has been a created situation.

I want my colleagues to think for a minute about the number of people who didn't make it to their aunt's funeral yesterday because of a contrived situation; the number of people who may not get to the birth of a grandchild; the number of business meetings that aren't going to occur because we have created a contrived situation. Our problem is we are continuing to spend money we don't have.

So we have taken FAA, we have put the airlines at risk--and they are, by the way, suing the government because they haven't made a good-faith effort to do it in another way--and we have created a situation where we are going to discomfit and inconvenience hundreds of thousands of American people on a political point because we can't cut any spending in Washington.

Let me outline for my colleagues a moment what the FAA could do. They could save $105 million by cutting their overhead expenses for consultant supplies and travel by 15 percent. That is one-seventh or one-sixth of all the money they need to keep all their controllers on. They could save $41 million by eliminating funding the President has already recommended eliminating in terms of programs for airports that are on the national plan of integrated airports. They have already recommended doing that, but they are not doing that. They have the flexibility to do that but they are not doing it. That is another $41 million.

They can save $6 million on small community air service--flexible. They could reduce the Airport Improvement Program. They have plenty of flexibility there. That is up to $926 million. They could do that. They could reduce or eliminate--and they would have to have our help to do this--the Essential Air Service Program where at many airports across this country we are paying a $1,200 subsidy to fly less than 10 people a day out of an airport less than 90 miles away from a major airport. So to say there is no flexibility, they do not want any flexibility. And the fact is our country is headed toward bankruptcy.

Let me talk about OCO for a minute. It is true OCO money is in the budget, because we thought we were going to have to spend it. But every penny of that money will be borrowed money--borrowed money. So if we weren't going to spend it, we are saying now we are going to go over here and take care of sequestration? A 4-percent cut in the Federal budget--4 percent. It is only 89 percent bigger than it was 10 years ago and we can't find 4 percent within the FAA?

Let me outline a few other things going on at the FAA. They have posted requirements for nonessential employees since sequestration started. They have made no efforts at flexibility. They have made no efforts to do what they could do to keep the most number of controllers working.

This isn't going to happen. We are not going to borrow money anymore against the future of our kids when in fact we have other ways to do it.

I will make my final point. The President is the CEO of this country.

He can make this happen with the least amount of inconvenience for the American people. The question is: Will he or not? Will he or not? Will we play this political shell game with the lives and perhaps the safety and certainly the inconvenience of the traveling public in this country to make the point there is no way we are going to cut any spending out of the Federal Government when it is 89 percent bigger? And, by the way, it is 48 percent bigger under President Obama.

It is a real choice. America is going to get a real choice: Can we in fact respond in a prudent way to run this government in an efficient manner and eliminate low-priority items and put money for items such as NIH in a priority? We can. The question is: Do we have the will to do that?

What we are hearing from the majority leader is: No, we don't want to cut anything. We will take some funny money that doesn't really exist, and if we use it, we are going to borrow, and that will take all the pain away. There won't be any oversight, no streamlining, no priorities made in terms of how we spend money.

Every other American family and business has had to make those decisions. Yet we are refusing to do it. When we asked the President: Do you want the flexibility, he said no. He would veto the bill that gives him the flexibility to put high priorities up here and low priorities down here. That tells me it is all political. It doesn't have anything to do with the FAA; it has to do with creating an event so we won't do what is in the best long-term interests of the country.

With that, I object.

I voted for it.

Madam President, the reason patients can't get their chemotherapeutic treatments has nothing to do with the budget. It has everything to do with the administration's CMS and payment recognition. I have been working on this issue for 3 months. It has nothing to do with the sequester. It has to do with what the CMS has ruled in terms of appropriate payments.

The majority leader is a wonderful man. He has a different view of what it takes to get our country back in shape. He has actually split with the President this afternoon, because the President said the only way he would, in fact, turn off sequester is with a tax increase, and the only way this can be considered a tax increase is spending money we weren't ever going to spend anyway and acknowledging we are going to charge it to our children. So, in essence, it will be a tax increase-- just not on us. It will be on every child.

It doesn't have to be this way. The President could agree for flexibility. His Secretaries could ask for reprogramming authority. But they have not done that. Why have they not done that? Because, in the President's own words, he wants sequester to hurt.

What a position for the CEO--the leader of this country--to say: I want to teach you a lesson. I am not going to use judgment and prioritize and categorize things that are most important and find things that are least important; I am going to reject all attempts at flexibility.

I wish to make one other point. The President keeps saying we have saved $2.5 trillion. The majority leader just said the same thing. What the American people ought to know is $1.2 trillion of that ``savings'' is for increases that were planned that aren't going to happen.

Let me say that again: $1.2 trillion of the savings is for spending increases that were planned that aren't going to happen.

Everybody who runs a family budget or runs a business knows that is no savings. You didn't save any money that you were going to spend but then didn't spend. It wasn't saved because you never spent it. But it is a wonderful way Washington accounts that is different than the way the rest of us have to live our lives.

So let's go back and review.

We as Republicans agree we ought to fund the most important functions of our government, and we believe there ought to be priorities to that. But we also believe we ought to save the future for our children.

The answer to that problem we found ourselves in--sequestration--is to give the administration the flexibility for making priority choices just like the rest of us do. If they don't want to use it, then they don't want to use it.

But the fact is we will not pass that. The same tools that we would all use ourselves, we will not pass that. Why is it we will not pass that, to order things in priority, to do what is most important first?

I would tell you the conferences and the amount of travel for which the FAA spends are a low priority compared to keeping controllers working. We haven't seen any cut in those programs--none. As a matter of fact, the President's budget recommended taking $800 million out of the airport improvement program--if you will read his budget. That was the President's recommendation. So now we are really at odds with the President because he says we can save that $800 million.

It is flabbergasting to think there is absolutely no common sense in Washington and that we will not do the things that are in the best long-term interests for the people of this country. So what we do is we create a situation that is going to tremendously impact our Nation-- both the business and the common citizen who is traveling--and we do it for political gain to prove a point, not because we have to--because we are going to make sequester hurt.

The security the American people want is to know the future is OK. The future isn't OK with us operating the way we are operating. I know government isn't easy and I know it is messy, but there are some absolute truths. The absolute truth is we can't spend our way out of debt and we can't borrow our way out of debt, and we are taking $88 billion over the next year out of the $3.7 trillion budget. If we are not capable of doing that, none of us should be here, either party.

What we fail to recognize is what the real risk is for our country; and the risk is that we are running out of time and the ability to continue to borrow in the world. The only reason we look good today is because everybody else looks worse. We are the only rose in the bud vase that is not wilted right now, and that is going to change. When it does, the consequences for our kids, for our families, for our economy, for our GDP is going to totally change.

If we went back to historical interest rates today, when we quit printing money--which we will eventually have to do--it will add another $650 billion a year to our expenses. It does nothing for anybody.

So this small 4.5 percent that the administration refuses to even work on to make it less painful to the American public shows what kind of trouble we are in.

I am disappointed, as is I know the majority leader, that we can't work out a way to solve this problem. But there are two totally competing philosophies; one ensures a productive, successful America, the other shows an America drowning in debt. There has to be a point in time when we say: Can't we run this government more efficiently, more effectively, and do it in a way that preserves the future for our children?

I yield the floor.

I ask unanimous consent that I be recorded as cosponsor on the Grassley amendment No. 725.

Madam President, I rise to speak on the issue the Senate is considering. It has been an interesting 3 or 4 weeks as we have considered and talked and thought about how we address what is best for our country and how we do that in a way that will protect the Constitution and protect individual rights and protect States rights. A lot of ideas have been thrown out, many of them with great infirmities in terms of either impacting Second Amendment rights, impacting 10th Amendment rights or the infirmity that they will not do anything to actually solve the problem.

I come from a State that is very pro-gun. I am very pro-gun. I own a multitude of weapons. I know how to handle them, I know how to fire them, and I know how to safely store them. The issue in front of us is, how do we protect this Second Amendment right and the Supreme Court's rulings that have affirmed our individual right to self-defense and our individual right to freedom? I believe I actually have an answer that the Senate could coalesce around.

As I talk to the most avid gun owners in Oklahoma, many of whom are opposing me trying to reach a compromise, the one question on which they agree with me is this: What if you could know as a gun owner or whoever you are--if you have a gun and you are going to sell it, what if you could know that you are not selling that gun to somebody on the ``do not buy'' list?

We have all these words going on now. Background check--there is no background check with the NICS list. It is a check against people who are prohibited from buying. It is not a very good list, by the way, because the States have not complied, the courts have not complied with people who have been convicted of felonies. We have a lot of problems in terms of a ``do not buy'' list.

We have to think of this list like the ``do not fly'' list that Homeland Security has. Nobody wants to get on an airplane with somebody who is on that ``do not fly'' list because they are on that list for a very good reason.

Most gun owners--as a matter of fact, I have not met one yet who wants to sell a gun to somebody who is on a ``do not buy'' list, which is called the NICS list. So how do we do that? How do we do that in such a way that we do not raise the cost, limit the freedom, or otherwise impede a free activity that is available, guaranteed under our Constitution?

The other thing I have learned is that the easier laws are to comply with, the more compliance you will get.

My proposal is very simple and straightforward. Let's create a way that whoever is selling a gun in this country can know they are not selling it to a criminal, they are not selling it to somebody who is prohibited, which is an illegal alien, a child sex abuser, a felon-- those people. How do you know? And can we do that in a way that doesn't inhibit commerce, doesn't inhibit your rights as an individual under the Second Amendment, doesn't inhibit the rights of a State under the 10th Amendment? How do we do those things?

You know, it is not hard. With our rights come some responsibilities. What if I could tell you that you could take out your cell phone and go to a portal and you could get a certificate that says--on your cell phones or printed out on your printer--that you are not on the list, and with that would be a PIN number, so that whomever could be selling you a gun would say, ``I am going to check your PIN number to see that this is not bogus, now show me your ID,'' and you could actually confirm whether somebody was on the list? That is how we control it. We make it easy. We don't put up large hurdles.

I find myself caught between both extremes in this debate. I actually think it is smart policy to make sure we put in place something allowing law-abiding citizens to do the right thing, to actually make a difference. If we were to do that, a large percentage--not all of them--of the transfers of weapons and guns to people who should not have them would stop.

The emotion associated with all the violent events over the last 3 or 4 years tends to cause us to lose sight of some pretty commonsense principles. We are not going to stop all gun violence in this country. People who are going to do illegal things are still going to do them. We cannot stop it all, but we can do straightforward, simple things that can make a big difference in lessening the availability of weapons to people who should not have them.

The other thing we can do is we can make it so that veterans do not automatically lose their Second Amendment right because for a short period of time, due to their service, they were incapable of managing their financial affairs. That is the right thing to do. We can do this. That is in this proposal.

But what I fear is going to happen is nothing. So what we are going to be offering when there is a time to allow other amendments is my amendment No. 727, which does the following things:

It reauthorizes the ``no buy'' list at an appropriate level.

It creates reforms to the grant system so that States will comply with reporting those people who are dangerous to themselves or somebody else, so we incentivize States to do that.

We create a protection for the Second Amendment rights of veterans.

We require the courts to submit to the ``no buy'' list those who are convicted of violent felonies. We require some transparency in State reporting so we can know whether a State is actually complying by reporting those who are a danger to themselves and other people, those who are truly mentally infirm. That is because one of our big problems--if you take Virginia Tech, the individual who committed that crime was known by the State to be a danger to themselves or somebody else. Yet they did not report it to the ``do not buy'' list. We incentivize that.

We allow for exceptions for people who are already authorized in their State to purchase guns, whether it is a concealed carry permit or whether it is what the State may use to say: Here is your authorization to say you are not on it. In other words, we give States primacy protecting the 10th Amendment. If they want to go further, they can, but we also allow them to innovate, which is one of the things our forefathers wanted us to make sure we did when we did things in Washington.

We create a consumer portal that is easy. We also create penalties if you misuse that portal for some other purpose.

We enforce a destruction of those records into that portal so that the government cannot use that as a list to know who is purchasing guns. So we eliminate the concern over record-keeping and its assault on the Second Amendment.

We also sunset this, so if it actually doesn't make a marked improvement--which I think it will--in 5 years, it goes away and we do something different.

The other thing is we limit the ATF's ability to grossly violate the intent of previous laws in terms of demand letters on federally licensed firearm dealers.

I daresay there is a difference in culture on guns in this country depending on where in the country you are, but there is a place to be found in the middle, in the Senate, for doing something that is common sense. What we are proposing is something that is simple, it doesn't cost any money to speak of, it is easily accessible, it is verifiable on both ends of the commercial transaction, it does nothing to eliminate the Second Amendment provisions in the Constitution or take away 10th Amendment rights of States, and it will actually decrease transfers of weapons to those who are on the ``do not buy'' list. Is it a comprehensive plan? No. Will it solve the problem? Yes. Will it work? Yes.

Some of the criticisms we heard--if there is no record, how do you know they did it? If 90 percent of the people in this country--which is what the media are all quoting--want us to do that, 90 percent of us think there ought to be an enhancement to the ``no buy'' list in terms of utilizing it, that same 90 percent of the people are the gun owners in America. So if 90 percent is the number, then you are going to have at least 90 percent compliance with this very simple, straightforward way that you can know you are complying with the law.

The other area that is confusing is that people want--and why they want--a record of a gun. It is for the investigation of a crime. Well, guess what. The best way to not ever have that crime is to have an effective check on the ``do not buy'' list. It will not eliminate all crime, but they say the infirmity with ours is that the weapon cannot be traced. That is right, it cannot be traced. The vast majority of used weapons are not sold through gun dealers or at gun shows. They are sold by average, everyday Americans to somebody else.

If we don't want the straw purchasers, felons, or illegal citizens buying them, then what we ought to do is set up something that 90 percent of Americans are going to comply with. It is not hard to do. It is easy to do the right thing. It doesn't please the gun control groups, and it doesn't please the hard Second Amendment rights groups.

If we think about it and actually make it easy for people to know that they could not sell a gun to somebody on the ``do not buy'' list, America would comply, and we would actually see a positive outcome of this debate.

I am amazed at the misinformation people have about guns when they

come to the Senate floor and talk about them when they have never fired some of those weapons, have never held them in their hands, and do not know what they are designed for.

I plan to come back tomorrow when I will bring up this amendment for consideration.

Our Founders had a Bill of Rights, and we have a Constitution. It was really designed for moral and good people. In that bill, as affirmed by the Supreme Court, was a Second Amendment right, and that is not going away. That right is not going to go away. Even if we were to take it away, the Supreme Court would probably bring it back.

We really ought to be leading and talking about what the real problems are in our country. What are our real problems? One of the real problems is that we are not a moral and great people anymore compared to what we were when our Founding Fathers drafted those documents. We are in some moral decline, and that is because of an absence of real leadership at a lot of levels and in a lot of areas in our country. We ought to recognize that we cannot legislate away the evilness about us. We cannot fix it all with a law. We fix it in the way we live our lives and the way we treat one another and how we reach out to give our lives for another person every day.

One of the crucial things is that we have become self-focused as Americans rather than Nation focused, and that is why we have seen this moral decline come upon us.

What I think our country is looking for is real leadership on the principles which matter, that change people's minds about what they do and how they do it. We are getting into a much larger debate than guns. Evil is out there. That criminal element is out there. That mental illness is out there. We are not going to address all of that with a few laws on guns. We are going to address that by character-based, morally led, morally affirmed leadership at all levels throughout our country.

As a physician, I am trained to fix the real disease, not treat the symptoms. This debate is about symptoms. It is an important debate. There are things we can do, but the real disease is our moral decline as a country.

The historians talk about it. John Taylor, the Scottish historian, talked about it. It is about the decline of all republics and what happens to them. America is built for a good, moral people. We have to have the leadership that calls us back to that.

I yield the floor and note the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, I would note to my colleague from the State of Delaware, if I heard him correctly, we just now have had a hearing on a nominee for the DC Circuit Court. He is not even on the Executive Calendar because he has not even been voted out of the Judiciary Committee. So the Senator makes a lot of great points. But I think the fact we are talking about a potential judge who has not even cleared the Judiciary Committee yet may be a bit premature.

He will get a fair hearing. I think we have noted that more judicial nominees were approved in the last two Congresses than the two Congresses before under the last 4 years of the Bush administration.

I rise to say this evening there has been a lot in the news. One thing that has not been in the news very much is the third and final report of the Government Accountability Office in terms of looking at duplication within the Federal Government.

I hope as the American people listen to this, they will take a couple things away. No. 1, we have a great organization called the Government Accountability Office. They have done a wonderful job. We mandated this 4 years ago. They have been on time with their reports. What they have shown us has been tremendously revealing. The first thing I want Americans to note is Congress has failed to act on the first two reports--no substantive action whatsoever.

One significant thing in the Senate was the elimination of the ethanol mandate. With this report today comes an estimated $98 billion a year in savings. What we take by looking at this report could potentially yield us $98 billion in savings by eliminating duplication in what they just found in this one report.

Let me go through it for 1 minute. They found 679 different renewable energy programs across 23 agencies--not across the Energy Department. If we are going to have renewable programs, that is where we should have it. Across 23 different agencies of which we spend $15 billion a year, they found instances where we are giving grants from different agencies to the same projects for the same thing, spending three times as much money as we should be spending on the one project even if we did not have that.

So the potential for us to work our way out of the consequences of the sequester is at our fingertips. Here, drug

abuse prevention and treatment, 76 separate programs, not run through the Department of Health and Human Services, run through 10 different departments with overlap that shows no metrics but multiple agencies having programs doing exactly the same thing: $4.5 billion a year. That is half the size of my Oklahoma State budget a year.

Catfish inspection. I saw in the President's budget today three different agencies where one has to meet the requirements before they can have their catfish inspected. The only thing they did not recommend in the budget today is getting rid of the Agriculture Department. They approve your cheese pizza. But the FDA approves your pepperoni pizza. So if you are a pizza maker, you have to comply with one agency on one type of pizza and another agency on a different type of pizza.

Defense foreign language support. Those are people who come in and help us learn other languages, interpret for us other languages so we can have an effective response and not have a communication error. We have 159 different programs in the Pentagon alone. What they are estimating is that we could save tons of money. We do not know exactly how much it costs because the Pentagon does not know how much they are spending on it, which is another one of the problems.

The GAO report said this week one of the reasons they cannot estimate the savings more accurately is because the majority of the agencies have no idea what they are spending on these programs. The question I have had is, why not? If they do not know what they are spending, why are we not doing something about it?

Higher education assistance: 21 different programs, four different agencies--not all in the Education Department, which is from where I think we would do education assistance, $174.7 billion a year. That includes Pell grants. That includes student loans, the cost associated with student loans.

Veterans employment training. We have six programs, not all of them run by the Veterans Affairs Department but run by the Veterans Affairs Department and other agencies. We are spending $1.2 billion. Here is what we know. We are running these programs, and veterans unemployment, even though they have a skill when they come out of the military, is higher than what the average is in the country. So it is obviously not working.

Also, in the report is something that is very important to me. Let me find it, if I might for a moment. GAO's report exposes a government office that does some good things. It is called the National Technical Information Service. It was established in 1950 and tasked with collecting and distributing certain reports. Despite the fact--here is what GAO found: 75 percent of the information that NTIS supplies, all you have to do is Google it. You do not have to go to NTIS. All you have to do is Google it. So 75 percent of their budget is spent providing reports to other government agencies and other people that you can get with the touch of your iPhone. Why would we continue to do that?

This is just one example that I bring up. We are continuing to fund an agency where three-quarters of what they do has no bearing on it. If it went away, it would not affect us at all. The other thing is they charge other Federal agencies a fee for this information that the other Federal agencies, at a touch of their computer, can get for free.

It is another case of inefficiency. What else did the GAO report show? What the GAO report showed is that we have done nothing of significance in the last 2 years based on what they have recommended we do given their first two reports. Our office calculates, based on the three reports that GAO has given us, that we could save in excess of $250 billion a year if we would follow the recommendations of the Government Accountability Office.

If you are sitting out there wondering why we are having tax proposals increased in the President's budget and that we are having such a hard time with the sequester, you only have to look at one place; that is, Congress. Congress refuses to follow and do the oversight. We have had GAO do a lot of it. We refuse to pass amendments that eliminate duplication. We refuse to make the tough choices. So, consequently, we are spending $250 billion a year--that is $2.5 trillion over 10 years--that we should not be spending.

Where does the money come from to pay for that? It comes from our kids. It doesn't just come in dollars, it comes from a reduced standard of living and limited opportunities in the future because we don't have the courage or the work ethic to address the very real issues which are in front us, on the tips of our fingers, where the money is, where we could actually save money.

We have had almost 1,000 days since the first report came out. We have done one significant thing in the Senate; we have eliminated the ethanol tax credit and saved $6 billion the first year and about $4 to $5 billion afterward. This is the one thing we did. We fought tooth and nail while we did it, but we did it.

This is one bill to save $6 billion in 3 years out of $250 billion. No wonder the confidence level in the Congress is at 13 percent. What we are actually doing is throwing away our kids' future as we fail to address these issues.

When we are spending money we don't have on things we don't absolutely need, and we are borrowing money against our children's future, I can't think of a greater immoral act of the Congress. It is not red hot lit up as some of the more controversial issues such as the gun bill we are doing or immigration; however, I will state it will have a profound effect if we were to address it in terms of the future of our country, the health of our country, and the job-creating capacity for our country.

Yet what is it about your Senator or your Congressman which keeps them from having the courage to challenge the status quo? I know what it is. It is the desire to get reelected by not offending anybody.

We don't have tough oversight hearings. We will not allow bills through committees which actually eliminate waste. There is a bill that has passed the House sitting on the docket right now called the SKILLS Act. It takes 47 job-training programs and puts them into 6. It saves billions of dollars a year and puts metrics on the outcome. We will not even bring it to the floor even though it saves $5 to $6 billion a year in addition to markedly improving the outcome of our job-training programs. It is not here.

It passed the House. The House is doing oversight in every committee right now. The Senate is not.

The House is reading the GAO reports and acting on them. They are not right 100 percent of the time, they are right about 95 percent of the time. Nothing is going to be done about it unless we have an oversight hearing to actually discover information. Nothing actually happens unless we write a bill to change things.

Yet this is not the emphasis in the Senate. There can be no greater emphasis than for us to get out of the financial troubles we are in. There can be no greater emphasis than for us to create an environment which produces jobs in the country when we stop wasting money at the Federal Government level.

Our answer is more government--not less, more. Our answer, according to the President's budget, is more taxes, not less.

I commend the President. He has $25 billion worth of programs he wishes to eliminate in his budget, $25.8 billion. He could send over what the GAO said and eliminate $250 billion a year.

The problems are not really with the President, it is with us: our intransigence to do our job and keep in our focal point what is most important. What is most important is our future and the capability for us to create opportunity in the future for our children and our grandchildren.

I have been fighting this for 8 years. There is a lot of oversight which has been done, tons of reports. The American people are going to eventually learn everything that is in this report because there is an app coming out which will be on people's cell phones very soon, and they may find out anything about everything where the government is wasting money. They will be able to look at an address in their own city and see how much money a company, business, or that farmer received from their Federal tax dollars. They will be able to see that in about 3 months.

When the American people discover our incompetence, it will not matter

that we didn't offend somebody. They are going to see we didn't do our job. We are not doing our job because we are not addressing the things we actually have some control over.

What do we do now? Here is what GAO explains: Although Congress had made some limited progress in addressing the issues we have previously identified, additional steps are needed to address the remaining areas to achieve associated benefits. A number of the issues are difficult but not impossible. Implementing many of the actions will take time and sustained leadership.

The key word there is ``leadership.'' Who is going to lead in the Senate to solve our problems? It is not party identified. Real leadership about solving the real problem is in front of us.

It is time for each congressional committee in the Senate to undertake the waste and overlap identified by GAO within their jurisdiction, begin writing bills to consolidate and eliminate these programs, and put metrics as far as performance on every one of them. It is also time for the White House to put real muscle into their proposal coming in through OMB.

I am thankful we will have a new OMB Director. She will be terrific. She has the skills, dedication, and qualifications. I praise the President for nominating her. She will fly through the Senate because she is superqualified for the job. Also, she knows what she is doing. But it will not matter what she does if we don't respond, if we don't do our work.

Gun Control

Mr. President, I would like to take the time now just to spend a moment or two on the guns issue.

I spent a lot of time over the last few months thinking about Sandy Hook. I actually met with a large number of those people today. I am an A-plus-rated member, a lifetime member of the NRA. I firmly believe in the second amendment, and I firmly believe in the tenth amendment.

We are hearing a lot of politics about the gun situation. What we are not hearing is how do we really keep guns out of the hands of people who shouldn't have them. This is what we need to be addressing.

Whether this would prevent a Sandy Hook, nobody knows. There are some things we do know. What we do know is the vast majority of people who are convicted the first time of a gun crime didn't steal their gun, and they didn't buy it from a federally licensed firearm dealer. They bought it from one of us.

The very fact we are going to have a piece of legislation go through here which will not solve the real problem of keeping guns out of the hands of the mentally impaired and felons is a shame. There are ways we can do that.

I haven't spoken to one owner I know who hasn't agreed with the fact that they would like to know if they sold their gun--they don't want it to go into the hands of a felon or somebody mentally impaired. Yet we are hung up on records. The proposal which comes from Senator Toomey, Senator Manchin, and Senator Kirk is a step forward. I will not deny it. However, tell me how a record which will only be looked at after a crime is committed is going to help anybody who is a victim of a crime. It is not.

If we really wish to solve this problem, what we need to do is put into the hands of Americans who are law abiding the ability to know they didn't sell their gun to somebody who is on the NTIS list. Give me the ability to know when I sell my gun to a stranger that they are not on that NTIS list.

This has been rejected out of hand because there is no record with it. The reason there doesn't need to be a record is because we are putting an onus on responsible citizens doing the right thing. Also, the government has no right to have a record of when I transfer a gun. They do have a right to expect me to be a responsible citizen when I sell my gun.

The question is, Are we as a body going to take something which is far less than appropriate to actually keep guns out of the hands of felons and mentally impaired and call it a day? This is what is getting ready to happen. Are we going to make a difference and not impair second amendment rights at all and not impair tenth amendment rights because we give States supremacy on that? If they want to give us something more or different, they may.

We are going to go through a great deal of debate and have all these amendments. I thank Senator Reid for making it an open amendment process. I called and spoke to him last night. I said I was happy to support going to this bill provided we use the regular Senate procedures and we actually are able to offer amendments which are germane to this bill in any number of ways. He is going to allow this process. I take him at his word he will allow this.

When it is all said and done, will we have made a difference to those families who are wanting us to make a difference? Would we have made a difference?

If we don't allow responsible citizens the ability to know whether they are selling their gun to a felon or a mentally impaired person, we haven't made any difference. We have made a lot of noise, but we haven't made a difference.

Let me tell you why the Toomey-Manchin proposal will not work. The largest gun show in America is in Tulsa, OK. It is called the Wanenmacher Gun Show. Tens of thousands of people come to it twice, maybe three times a year. The sale will be impeded by requiring an FFL license, which is to say a gun dealer at the show will be required to do a background search against the NTIS list for somebody who purchases a gun at the show whether they are buying from that dealer or not.

The first thing which will happen is the Federal firearms licensed dealer will say: I want a fee for transferring this gun, for doing the work--and rightly so. I don't blame him. What is the option?

The option which will happen is the people who are going to make the deal buy the gun. Subsequently, 2 or 3 days after the gun show, they will buy the gun because they will not be at the gun show anymore.

Look at the opposite side of that. If we had a portal or we could get a certificate which says someone is not on the NTIS list and are able to buy a gun anytime, anywhere, somebody selling a gun would have a pin code to make sure their identity is correct and see their ID. Whether a person is in a gun show or outside a gun show, the responsible gun seller will know they didn't sell a gun to somebody mentally impaired or a felon.

We will have all sorts of statements, but what we are going to do isn't going to decrease guns in the hands of felons and the mentally impaired. We can say we need to win. If we want a bill to get through the Senate and get through the House which will actually make a difference in people's lives, that felons and the mentally impaired aren't empowered to buy guns, we need to do something different.

My friends in the second amendment community don't even like my proposal. I understand this. But there is no impairment when all you need to do is go to your cell phone to receive a clearance to know somebody is not on the NTIS list.

We get to decide. Are we going to do it in a way which smells good, looks good, but doesn't do anything? Are we going to fight to do something which actually makes a difference? I hope we choose the latter. I am not convinced we will. The reason Senator Manchin couldn't get me to agree to what he had agreed to with Senator Toomey is because I don't think it is going to work. I think the vast majority of gun purchasers at gun shows are going to wait to buy them later from the very same people who were going to sell them at a gun show so they do not have to pay a fee and wait 3 or 4 days on a background check. If that happens, what good have we done? How have we made a difference? We haven't.

It is a sad fact, as a practicing physician, and having done training and surgery, I have had to operate on a lot of people who ended up with the consequences of a weapon being used on them.

Oklahoma has a gun culture, and I own multiple guns. I cherish my second amendment right. But with that right comes some responsibility to do the right thing. Liberty without responsibility isn't liberty, and it will not last unless we attach responsibility to it. So if we really believe in the second amendment, and if we really believe in the tenth amendment, we will relook at what we are going to do in terms of

gun transfers. There is a way to do it that will actually make a big difference in people's lives in this country, and it may actually get through the House.

What we are proposing, what we are seeing proposed right now, is never going to pass the House. Consequently, we will have done something in the Senate with no long-term consequences and actually making a difference for the American people.

Mr. President, I thank the Presiding Officer for the time. I yield the floor, and I suggest the absence of a quorum.

Mr. President, first of all, I ask unanimous consent to use oversized charts. I don't actually like to use oversized charts, but I cannot get all the information I need to present on one regular chart because I am looking at one subject area.

First of all, I wish to thank the chairman of the Budget Committee for bringing a budget to the floor. It is great that we have done it.

We know the outcome of this budget vote already. The final budget vote will not come until sometime in the middle of the night. But in that budget we are going to spend $47 trillion. There is a dispute between how we look at it and how our colleagues on the other side look at it, but there is at least $1 trillion in tax increases.

The new debt over the next 10 years is $7.3 trillion despite $1 trillion in tax hikes. The debt that has been added since the last budget passed this Senate is $5.5 trillion.

The spending increase above the projected growth over 10 years is $645 billion. The spending increase in this budget next year above today's budget level is $162 billion.

The deficit increase next year relative to the fiscal year 2014 projection by CBO is a $95 billion increase in our debt--we are not going the other way.

The growth rate in the Federal budget over 10 years is going to be 60 percent, and in the mandatory programs it is going to be 80 percent, so we are going to have the government growing at least 7 percent a year, continuing to grow at a rate faster than our economy, at a rate faster than personal income.

The net deficit reduction over that 10 years over what was projected may be $270 billion. The deficit reduction achieved through spending cuts will be zero in this budget--zero through spending cuts.

The deficit reduction through elimination of duplication, fraud, and waste in this budget is zero.

The date this budget balances is never.

I am bringing these charts to the floor because I want the American people to know how we are not doing our job. We are going to get a vote on a lot of these things, I have told my colleagues. I haven't been allowed to offer a lot of these amendments on bills that have come to the floor, so we are going to vote on them tonight and into the early hours tomorrow morning. The reason it is important for us to vote on them is because the American people need to know whether or not we are going to act on them. Let me start to go through some of the programs and see if it matches any type of common sense that anybody in America might have about how we could go about helping American citizens.

Three years ago we forced the GAO to do a duplication study of the whole Federal Government. We are going to get that last report about 1\1/2\ weeks from now. They will have looked at the whole Federal Government. This is just the data based on the first two reports. Let me just go through it rather quickly so my colleagues can see.

We have 15 unmanned aircraft programs, 5 agencies, $37 billion a year. Why do we have 15 of them? Does that make sense to anybody?

We have domestic food programs, 18 different programs, 3 different agencies, and we are spending $62 billion.

We have 21 different homeless programs--21 different homeless programs. It is great that it is only one through one agency. Why do we have 21 separate programs? Each one of these programs has a bureaucracy and office staff and overhead and administration. Why not have one or two?

Transportation services for transportation-disadvantaged persons: 80 separate, different, distinctly designed programs in 80 different agencies. Why not in the transportation agency alone? Why not run it out of the department it should be run through?

Job training and employment, 47 programs for the able-bodied, 9 different agencies, and it is actually $18.9 billion. We have actually done all the oversight on this. In Oklahoma, we have 17 federally-run job training programs in a city that has less than 15,000 people and has 400 people unemployed, 17 separate offices run by the Federal Government.

Teacher quality, 82 separate teacher training and quality programs, not run within the Department of Education but run within the Department of Education and nine other agencies. How does that fit? When we are in a time when we are trying to make hard decisions to protect the future of this country and a fiscal balance, why won't we address this? None of this stuff has been addressed. This has been known for 2 years. None of it is in the budget. It is not even in the House budget.

Food safety, 30 different programs, 15 different agencies, $1.6 billion. Do people realize if we buy a cheese pizza at the grocery store it is controlled by the Department of Agriculture, but if somebody buys a pepperoni pizza at the grocery store it is controlled by the FDA? Does that make sense to anybody? Why would we continue to be stupid? And we are the ones being stupid because we will not address these issues.

Military and veterans health services, we have four agencies running that. I would think we would want the VA to run that, not the VA plus three other agencies.

Economic development, we have 80 programs, 4 different agencies, and $6.5 billion a year.

U.S.-Mexican border region water needs, all right, we have Arizona on that border, we have Texas on that border, and we have California on that border. We have seven different agencies that control that. Why? Why would we do that?

Financial literacy programs, I would make the point that we are not very good in financial literacy within the Federal Government because all one has to do is look at our budget. There are 13 different agencies, 15 programs, plus the new Financial Consumer Protection Board is going to create another one--another one. We are spending $30 million a year on that.

Green buildings, 94 different programs, 11 different agencies, spending $1 billion a year.

Housing assistance, 160 different programs, 20 agencies--20 Federal Government agencies--spending $170 billion a year the overhead that is associated with all of this, the duplication that is associated with it, the complications, the paperwork.

Department of Justice grant programs, 253 of them: They are within the Department of Justice, but they are run through 10 other Federal agencies, not the Department of Justice.

Diesel emissions, 14 different programs, 3 different agencies. Why three? Why do we have to interact with three different agencies to have our diesel emissions controlled, and why are there 14 different programs?

Early learning and child care, 50 programs, 9 agencies, $16 billion.

Surface transportation, 55 programs, 5 agencies, $43 billion.

Support for entrepreneurs, 53 programs, 4 different agencies. We have small business, but guess what. We have one at Agriculture, we have one at Treasury, we have one somewhere else I can't remember; $2.6 billion.

Science, technology, education and math, we all agree it is important. The Pentagon has over 100 programs. The Pentagon itself has over 100 programs. Then we have another 105 or so programs spread across the rest of the agencies. Thirteen different agencies have a science, technology, engineering program. Why is that not within the Department of Education?

As I finish this, I will not go to the next chart just on the basis of time.

I outlined a whole bunch of different programs, and not one of them has a metric on it that says we are successful or unsuccessful--not one of them. So even the agencies that have these multiple programs, running across multiple agencies, have no endpoint to say: Are you doing anything?

What we have discovered on job training is we are real good in job training with Federal programs of employing people in job training. We are terrible in terms of giving them a life skill that will give them a lifetime work capability.

Let me take a short time to show some examples. Looking at this chart, we can see why we have such big charts.

Here are the Federal preschool and daycare programs. So if someone wants to provide that to somebody, look at the maze of bureaucracy they have to go through just to qualify.

The pink areas on this chart show the different departments that run them. The blue areas are the subagencies created out of the green ones. So we can see, in Federal preschool and daycare, we have the General Services Administration, that has four programs; we have the Department of Agriculture, that has this multitude of programs. But even if you have it at the Department of Agriculture, you cannot do anything because you have to talk to the Department of Education too, because they are interrelated in how they are controlled.

Early learning. The Justice Department has a multitude of programs. The Department of Health and Human Services has a multitude of programs. We even have a tax expenditure program for childcare and early learning. The Department of Labor has their own.

We can see what has happened to us is we have not done the oversight, the work to eliminate the problems that are causing us to spend at least $200 billion more per year than we need to spend.

Here are the Federal programs for surface transportation and infrastructure. We can see why this is so big. Here is the Federal Highway Administration and here are all their subprograms for it. Then over here is the Office of the Secretary. Then we have the Federal Railroad Administration; we have the Maritime Administration; we have the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration. If you are a State transportation director, you have to meet the bureaucratic requirements of every one of these programs.

I talked about science, technology, engineering, and math. Look at what we have. What we have is a maze where nobody in the government knows what the other agency is doing. Nobody knows what somebody over here in the Mickey Leland Energy Fellowship funding is doing compared with the New Era Rural Technology Competitive Grants Program.

Here is the other thing we have found as we have gone through all these programs: We have people who apply for a grant and get it from one of these programs and then turn around and go over and apply for the same grant from another program.

It is easy to see, when we continue to see multiple programs--here, even to get efficient in our Federal fleet, we have 5 different programs, 20 different agencies, just to try to get fuel efficiency within the Federal Government. We started out with electronic health records systems for veterans and the military. We have 10 different programs within that--not 1 program, not 2, but 10.

Just one other. Here is a chart with green buildings. We listed that: a multitude of agencies, a multitude of programs. Every department in the Federal Government has a green building

initiative separate and apart from a central area where it ought to be and probably associated with the National Institute of Standards and Technology. That ought to be who is running it, but it is not.

We have all these things. All these require rules for you to comply with if you are going to get a building permit or you are going to have any Federal contracts. It makes no sense.

I will end.

Mr. President, how much time do I have?

Nobody in their right mind will agree that what we are doing is smart, efficient, effective, and associated with common sense. But yet when it comes to doing the hard work of oversight and eliminating these duplications, nobody in the Senate wants to do the hard work of eliminating them. A conservative estimate is that we send out $670 billion worth of grants a year. A conservative estimate is that $200 billion of that is totally wasted, and we are sitting here squabbling about raising taxes. This budget raises $1 trillion over 10 years. If we would do our hard work in terms of

Mr. President, there is so much distraction in the Senate I cannot talk.

If we would simply do our job, we would not have to have tax increases, we would not have to have spending cuts that will gut our military, although I can show a lot of waste in the military too, to the tune of $50 billion a year. But if we would just do our job and actually look in detail--the way GAO has recommended and the way Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs has oversighted through the years, thanks to the leadership of Lieberman, Collins, Carper, and those who preceded them--what we will see is we have all this research, we have all this knowledge, we have all this stuff we know we can do, but we have no leadership in the Senate to get it done, and we bring a budget forward that perpetuates everything I just showed.

There is no mandate for every committee to eliminate total duplication in this budget. There is no mandate in this budget to consolidate like programs and eliminate cross-agency interference and duplication. There is no mandate in this budget that every grant program ought to have a metric on it to see if it actually accomplishes something. There is no metric in this budget to give the agencies the power and the resources to actually administer the grants effectively so we know what they are doing--none of that. This is all ignored.

As long as we say the only problem is saving Medicare and saving Social Security and saving the Defense Department, we are going to continue to waste $200 billion a year. I do not know what it is. I do not know if it is that I am not an effective communicator or if people have other priorities. But our grandchildren are totally dependent upon us eliminating so much stupidity. Yet nobody--the Appropriations Committees do not want to. Most of the authorizing committees do not want to. They will not do the hard work of eliminating the duplication.

I did not show the housing. I showed the total amount we spend. Do you realize we had paid a housing administrator in Oklahoma for 2 years in a town that had no homes. Picher, OK--we cleaned it out because of lead contamination. But we kept paying the housing administrator for Picher for 2 years--until I found it. I said: Why are we paying this guy? There are no homes.

Those little things, multiplied by a billion times throughout government programs, happen every day, and then we tell Americans we are going to raise your taxes because we will not do the hard work of oversight. We deny our oath when we do that, but we also deny the best tendencies and the tradition of this country. We can do a whole lot more with a whole lot less money if we would take care of this problem. But leadership is lacking on doing it.

As long as we have our eye on the ball of saving Medicare and saving Social Security and do not have our eye on the ball of the things that are spending money that we are getting no value for--or very limited value--we are going to continue to be in trouble financially as a country, even if we do save Medicare and Social Security.

Every dollar the American taxpayer pays into this country should be precious to us. Our foreign aid budget, we never talk about it. Our foreign policy has not been reauthorized for years. There has not been a full-time inspector general in the State Department in 6 years. We have seven open spots for inspectors general to actually look at this stuff and to advise us and advise the agencies.

We are failing to do our job. My only wish for my colleagues is to get informed, and if they are on a committee, they do not have to solve it the way I solve it, but just solve it. It makes no sense to continue to duplicate things.

As a matter of fact, in job training, here is what GAO said: Of the 47 job training programs for nondisabled people--we have another 53 for the disabled--of the 47 all but 3 do exactly the same thing.

Either GAO is lying or they are not. If they are not lying, why wouldn't we, in the next 2 months in this place, fix those programs to make them where they are actually giving real skills, for a real livelihood, to people who need real job training. There is no effort at all to do that.

The House just passed a bill, and it barely passed because every one of these squares that we show on any one of these charts has a constituency. In other words, they are dependent on money coming from the Federal Government. So even though it is not efficient and not effective, our colleagues do not want to irritate anybody getting that money because we are more interested in getting reelected than fixing the long-term problems of our country.

All you have to do is go to our Web site, coburn.senate.gov, and you will need a strong anti-emetic for the rest of the week if you read the waste and fraud and abuse and thievery that is going on with Federal Government programs. This budget does not address any of that waste.

Do you realize $200 billion out of $670 billion is $2 trillion over the next 10 years. If we just fixed that, it would help pull us out of the big hole. That is $2 trillion that has a very low economic multiplier in our economy versus $2 trillion that might have a bit.

I will end on this last point: Last year we gave out $4 billion to foreign countries that own more than $100 billion of our debt. Ask the typical American--we are borrowing money from China, and we are giving them foreign aid. They own $850 billion of our debt. Why would we do that? We are in debt, we are scrambling, we are borrowing $40 million a minute, and we are taking the money we are borrowing from China and turning around and giving it back to them in foreign aid. Why would we do that? It just shows how out of control all the processes are in Washington because we fail to be informed and hold the administration-- whether it is a Bush administration or an Obama administration, all of them are guilty. The reason they are guilty is because we are not raising the question.

I will tell my colleagues, they are going to get a vote on a lot of this stuff. A lot of my amendments have bipartisan support. But we are going to vote. They get to vote on whether they think we ought to eliminate duplication. They are going to have 17 separate votes on that. I am going to try to wind those into two votes. Vote against fixing it and then go home and tell Americans you want to raise their taxes $1 trillion, and you do not want to eliminate the stupidity going on in Washington.

I thank the chairman and the ranking member for the time.

Would the Senator, through the Chair, take a question? Does the Senator know the number of agencies in the Federal Government that actually know how many programs they have in their agency?

There is one agency in the Federal Government that knows all its programs. Only one. The Department of Education. They actually publish it every year. They actually have done a great job. I compliment them. Not one other Federal agency actually knows all of the programs that run under their auspices.

My colleagues might want to hear the other side of the story. My amendment reverses $4.6 billion that was taken from rural hospitals all across this country and given to two States. Every Member's rural hospitals lose money based on the earmark placed in the Affordable Care Act. All this does is reverse that.

There is nothing in the amendment by the Senator from New Jersey about wage neutrality, which is the whole problem in the first place. The cosponsors, I am sure, of the two States have markedly benefited at the expense of every other rural hospital across this country.

A vote for the Menendez amendment keeps us in line to continue to take $4.6 billion over the next 10 years out of rural hospitals. If Senators vote for my amendment, we go back to a fair distribution for the rural hospital payments.

Mr. President, there are no tricks in this. All we are trying to do is reverse what was done inappropriately.

There is no question we need to do some adjustment on wages. That is for another time when we actually try to save Medicare.

This amendment requires all States but two over 10 years to increase the payments to rural hospitals back to what they would have been had the amendment by Senator Kerry in the Affordable Care Act not been there. So that is the whole purpose, to bring us back to where we were.

I ask to call up amendment No. 409.

Mr. President, if there is no opposition, nobody on my side wishes to speak.

Mr. President, I understand what the Senator from Louisiana is trying to do, but it goes toward the bigger problems of GSA. I will give you a great example.

In my hometown they are building a brand new U.S. Attorney's Office with four other sites that are available that could have been leased, and they are going to lease this one as well. So leasing doesn't solve the problem. What we need to attack is the inefficiencies and ineffectiveness of GSA.

I am sure we will take a voice vote on this, but I am not sure I agree with the solution of the Senator from Louisiana.

Mr. President, this is a simple vote. The Postal Service lost $15.8 billion last year. Political parties contributed to that loss by our getting a discount on all of our mail. All this will do is put us at the same rate as everybody else commercially in terms of the mailing. It is probably about $50- to $60 million if we pass this amendment that we will increase the revenue to the Postal Service.

I ask for the yeas and nays.

I ask unanimous consent to withdraw the amendment.

Mr. President, with a lot of consternation, we are worried about how the sequester affects everybody--the Defense Department and all the other agencies. But in fact the Pentagon spends $67 billion on things that have absolutely nothing to do with defense. All we will be doing is creating a deficit-neutral reserve fund to move this nondefense spending--either move it or eliminate it from the Defense Department.

I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. President, 3\1/2\ years ago we instructed the GAO to tell us where the government problems were, what are the government programs, and where was there duplication. We have yet to pass one piece of legislation that would eliminate any of the duplication in the Federal Government--not one. What this does is combine 17 different amendments that I had offered on this budget to create a deficit- neutral reserve fund to cause us--to force us--to look at all these programs by area and consolidate them.

What this amendment would do, very specifically--it doesn't say you eliminate; it says you consolidate. You get efficiency, you get effectiveness, and you look to make sure when we are spending tax dollars that they are actually accomplishing something and they are doing it in the most efficient and effective ways.

I ask for the yeas and nays on this amendment.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the order for the quorum call be rescinded.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the pending amendment be set aside and amendment No. 69 be called up.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the amendment be considered as read.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the amendment be set aside and amendment No. 93 be called up.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the amendment be considered as read.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the amendment be set aside and amendment No. 65, with modifications, at the desk be called up.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the amendment be considered as read.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the amendment be set aside, and amendment No. 70, as modified, be called up.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent that the amendment be considered as read.

Mr. President, I want to comment a minute, before I talk about the individual amendments, on the process we have seen.

We are going to have several amendments, and this is well in excess of $1 trillion in spending. We have had four amendments voted on, and I think unanimous consent will give us seven or eight more. So we are going to have a total of 12 amendments. All but the first one were not tabled, but we are at 60-vote margins, which is fine. But for a bill that spends $1 trillion, to choke down the Senate in a way that does not allow either side the appropriate opportunity to impact $1 trillion worth of spending doesn't fit with either the culture or the history of the Senate, and certainly doesn't fit with the agreement going forward and the rules changes we had this year.

On a bill that has $1 trillion worth of spending, in past history--if you look at the 104th, the 105th, the 103rd Congress--bills of that size would have 70 or 80 amendments, and we are going to choke down to 11 or 12 amendments on this. The question is, Why would we do that? Why would we limit the discussion and the division of thought, manifested through votes, for the American people to actually see what we are doing? There are only two reasons why this is happening. One is--and from a phone call with the President, in his own words, he wants sequester to hurt.

Now, think about that for a minute. And he is my friend. I challenged him on that when he said it to me. But there is a philosophical divide in this country. The Federal Government over the last 10 years has grown 89 percent, while the average median income has declined 5 percent. The reason my colleagues want sequester to hurt and be painful is they want to rationalize that bigger government is better, that we cannot afford to cut a penny out of the Federal budget. So what we do is the Federal Government is doing less with more money while every American is doing more with less money. That goes against the greatest tradition of our country. It is also a prescription for failure for our country when we are willing to sacrifice, in the short term, direct benefits to major segments of our population for a political point.

Nobody has done more oversight on the Federal Government than I have in the last 8 years, and I will tell you, conservatively, out of the discretionary budget, $250 billion a year is spent that does not positively impact this country in any way. Yet we cannot get up amendments to demonstrate that.

Not only can we not have an amendment up, we cannot even spend the time on it to have a real debate about it. That is because they really do not want to debate these issues of waste, duplication, fraud, and inefficiency.

Then the second reason we are not having amendments, or we are having amendments at 60 votes, is to provide the political cover. Our country is in so much trouble it should not matter what party you are in. What should matter is if we are fixing the long-term problems of our country in such a way as to secure the future of our country.

What we have seen through this process last week and this week is a focus on the short term, a focus on the politically expedient, a focus on the parochial--and from both sides of the aisle. This is not just Democrats, this is Republicans too. Senator Ayotte can't even get an amendment to eliminate spending for a missile program that is never going to be built. It is never going to be built, but we are going to spend $360 million on it next year because it is a parochial prize to a member of the Appropriations Committee.

Washington is not sick because it is partisan. Washington is sick because it is political, and it is short term in its thinking. Nobody in their right mind, no matter how much it benefits their State, would say they want to spend $380 million or $360 million--I am not sure of the exact amount of money--on a program that is never going to come into fruition unless they are thinking about them and not our country and not the families of our country and not the programs that have to be reformed to save them. Nobody would do that. Yet we have 60 votes on all these amendments we are going to offer because they are going to offer protection for people to vote on them to know that they will not even pass, but they can still get the cover for a vote. They can say: I voted for it but it didn't pass because it has to have 60 votes.

That is the smallest part of the problem. To have to go through what we have gone through over the last 5 or 6 days and only have had four votes says something about this place. I would just proffer that I bet had we had an open amendment process we would have been finished with this bill yesterday.

When I came here, for the first 2 years you could offer an amendment for anything at any time at a 51-vote threshold. So all this time we have wasted in quorum calls or on speaking on issues that have nothing to do with the bill in front of us is because we really do not want to govern. What we want is we do not want the body to do its work and have the input of both sides into a bill--other than in the committee. What we want is a fixed outcome that will allow the administration to make sequester as painful as it can be.

So when you shut down packing plants, when the USDA says they cannot have food inspectors there at the same time the USDA is advertising for social service workers and event planners--which, if you did not hire them, could at least give you 52 people not being furloughed for a week. What is happening to America today is we are focused inward on the politics rather than our country. We are focused on gaming the system rather than governing. We are focused on all the wrong things because it is all about the next election.

We have our eyes so far off the ball that now every bill that comes to the floor has to have essentially a rules committee of one, which is the majority leader, deciding whether he wants his members to vote on a bill. That doesn't have anything to connect with the history of the Senate. This is no longer the greatest deliberative body in the world because we do not deliberate; we do not have an open amendment process; we are too afraid of our own shadows to cast a vote and think we might have to defend it.

If you cannot defend any and every vote in this body, you do not have any business being here. To stifle debate and to limit amendments in the way this bill has done certainly will not breed any goodwill going forward and certainly does not do service that the American citizens are due.

Mr. President, I will now take some time to talk about the various amendments I have called up. Amendment No. 69 is the first amendment I called up. As the ranking member on Homeland Security and the ranking member on the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, what we know is Homeland Security, in its grants program, through what is called the Urban Area Security Initiative, is out of control. They have not prioritized their funding. They have not put metrics on their funding. They have not controlled their funding.

We put out a report in December 2012 called Safety At Any Price, and we highlighted the problems with this particular grant program. No clear goals, DHS has not established any clear goals for how the funds should be used to improve national security. The 9/11 Commission warned against DHS spending becoming pork spending. UASI, this Urban Area Security Initiative, has become another porkbarrel program providing public safety subsidies to cities such as in my home State, Tulsa.

No. 3, what we found is a tremendous amount of waste in these grants. The lack of clear goals has led States and cities to use this funding on wasteful projects, including paying for overtime for employees; purchasing computers, printers, televisions, underwater robots, bearcats--all the things that do not really connect to national security and the prevention of terrorism.

This amendment prohibits $500 million allocated for the UASI grant program that has been wasted on items that do not relate to homeland security. It prohibits the use of funds on overtime, backpay--backfill pay, security at Major League baseball parks, spring training camps, attendance at conferences, and the purchase of flat-screen TVs.

The other thing we found in our report is the Department of Homeland

Security doesn't know what this money was spent on. Not only do they not have goals and metrics for what the money is supposed to be spent on, they cannot tell us what the money was spent on because they don't actually have any record of it. We have spent $35 billion in total on all DH grant programs since 2003. We have spent $7.1 billion on this program.

What I can tell you is it has helped some communities, I don't doubt that, especially during our tough times. It has filled in. But if we are ever going to get out of the problem we are in as a country in terms of our debt and deficits, we have to have programs that have metrics on them that have to be followed up. The grants have to be followed, and they need to be held to account.

My colleagues, I have no hopes of this passing because most of my colleagues will not look at the research done on this, will not look at the ineffectiveness of it, will not look at the waste, and will vote a party-line vote to defeat this amendment. We will get 45 or 50 votes or 51 or 52, but it will go down. So, consequently, real problems that have been oversighted by the Permanent Committee on Investigations-- really oversighted by the Department of Homeland Security--the real solutions to problems will not happen because of the way this place is being run.

Next, I would like to talk about amendment No. 93. Amendment No. 93 follows a recommendation of the President. It is not my recommendation, it is the President's recommendation. What this amendment would do is actually take money that has been directed for expired heritage area authorizations that were not any recommendations of the President-- actually the President's recommendation was to cut this money in half-- and we are going to do exactly that with this amendment. We are going to cut it by $8.1 million.

What heritage areas are, when we started them--the 12 heritage areas this is about are at least 16 years old. One of them is 25 years old. The whole idea behind heritage areas was to fund them with a grant program to get them started and then let them run on their own with State and local funds. They have become a dependency program.

The OMB and the President's budget said we ought to eliminate the dependency of these by trimming back the amount of money. Instead of becoming temporary programs directed toward self-sufficiency as originally intended, these national heritage areas have turned into permanent entities that continue to grow in number and funding amount-- totally opposite the original authorization intent. In other words, they are parochial based.

As a matter of fact, one of them, the John Chaffee Blackstone River National Heritage, has existed for more than 25 years. They actually thought the funding might get cut, so they created another way to pay for it, just as the government had intended for them to do, and they raised the money for it this year. But we are going to fund them anyway in this appropriations package, this Omnibus appropriations package. It is not really a CR, it is an Omnibus appropriations. Of these, 12 have already received $112 million, more than half the total ever spent on national heritage areas.

So they have been in existence at least 16 years. They should have become self-sufficient. They need to become self-sufficient, and we should not be spending the money. What will we do with the money that will amount to about $16 million? We will turn that money into opening the tours at the White House, opening Yellowstone National Park and the rest of the parks. In terms of the way that money is spent out, we will be able to take $6 million or $7 million of that money and the national parks will open on time.

Most of you haven't heard about this, but in Jackson Hole, WY, and Cody, WY, the citizens of that State are raising private money to plow the snow so Yellowstone National Park can open on time. I want you to see the contrast because it is important to their livelihood and their commerce. They are going to sacrifice personally to get that park open on time. At the same time we are going to send money to 12 national heritage areas that have been dependent on the Federal Government for 16 years.

Tell me what is wrong with that picture. We are going to create a dependency, and then we are going to indirectly tax the people of Wyoming--one of their great areas of commerce, a place where visitors come to Wyoming to see Yellowstone Park--and have them use their own post-tax money to pay for that. That cannot fit with the vision of America that almost everybody else in this country believes in. It doesn't fit.

Other national parks have reported campgrounds that are going to be closed to reduce maintenance. So we are going to take this $6 million, and we are going to use it to help open these parks and allow the Park Service to have the parks open on time. In the original authorization, it was not supposed to get any money. They should not have been getting money for the last 10 years. Instead of creating a dependency in the program, we are going to take that money and do something for the American people.

The next amendment is amendment No. 65, as modified. And this is one that really gets my goat. The National Science Foundation funds lots of great scientific endeavors in this country. As a matter of fact, they have about four times as many applications for grants as they have money to give out. But they spend a considerable amount of money doing such things as funding ``research in political science.'' In 2008 they spent $8.6 million funding research in political science, $10.9 million in 2009, $11 million in 2010, $10.8 million in 2011, and $10.1 million in 2012. What this amendment does is prohibit the National Science Foundation from wasting Federal resources on political science projects and redirects that to other areas within NSF that are going to give the American people a much greater return on their investment.

Let me give some examples of what they fund: campaigns and elections, citizen support, and emerging and established democracies, bargaining processes, electoral choice, democratization, political change in regimes, transitions. Those are all important things if we were not in a budget and spending crisis. Tell me whether it would be better to have the next new computer chip generation developed through a grant at the National Science Foundation or if the actions of a filibuster in the Senate are more important to the American people. Which one is a greater priority? Which one is more important to the further advancement of this country? I guarantee it is the former and not the latter.

In the years hence, we are going to be making a lot of choices about priorities, and every amendment I am putting out here today is about priorities. Do we fund things that do not adequately or accurately help us in the short term in creating jobs, in being wise and prudent spenders of taxpayers' money, or do we fund things that are a low priority and let things that are high priority suffer? That is basically what this amendment does. It says: Until we get out of this pinch, we should not be spending money to--for example, the $251,000 used to study Americans' attitudes toward the Senate. We spent a quarter of a million dollars last year studying Americans' attitude toward the Senate; $106,000 was spent to study the rise of candidate- centered elections over those dominated by political parties; $47,000 was spent to study the President's level of cooperation with Congress when they utilize Executive orders; $28,000 was spent to examine the prohibition movement. It has been a long time since we had prohibition in this country. That has to be a priority for us. How about a quarter of a million dollars to investigate how people perceive the political attitudes of others? That has to be important right now. It has to be a priority right now for our country. We spent $144,000 to track how politicians change their Web sites over time. Who cares? That money-- $144,000--will keep a whole bunch of meat inspectors at meat plants. There will not be any furloughs if we get rid of this kind of stuff. I could go on.

Mr. President, I ask unanimous consent to have printed in the Record what I consider nonpriority studies that the NFS has funded.

This is where we should be doing our work. We should be making choices for the American people. We should be making the hard choices that say this is more important than this. We don't have enough money. We are borrowing $40 million a second, and we are going to fund these kinds of political studies that have no benefit except to the politicians and the political science professors because they are the ones who will read them. The average American doesn't care. But they do care whether their meat is going to be safe and whether they are going to get meat.

Mark my words, this amendment will go down. It won't be passed because we don't have the courage to make priority choices in the Senate. We don't have the courage to allow the number of amendments, such as this--there should have been 30 or 40 such as this--on the floor to make those choices.

Finally, I will talk about amendment No. 70. This amendment has been modified. The appropriators have requested that Homeland Security- related reports--which are demanded in this bill--come to them. They do appropriate for Homeland Security, but there is an authorizing committee. It happens to be the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee. What this amendment says is: If you are going to give information from the administration to appropriations, you might want to think about giving it to the actual committee that has the authority to authorize and change the program.

I hope this will be accepted. We are going to get it 14 days after the appropriators. I don't know what that is all about, but I am willing to concede. I think Senator Carper and myself ought to see what the administration is saying to the appropriators about programs that are run through the Department of Homeland Security. So of all the amendments we have, I think this is the only one that has any possibility.

I yield the floor.

Mr. President, the average age of the heritage areas in this bill is 16 years. If you look at the original authorization, none of them was supposed to get any Federal money now. As a matter of fact, the Senator's heritage area has planned and raised the money for his area and had an alternative plan to do it.

The fact is, the national parks will open with this amount of money on time this year, so it will make a big difference in Yellowstone and all the rest of the national parks. The National Park Service does have something to do with the White House tours because they can take this money and allocate that. It is not a Secret Service problem, it is a national park problem.

I ask for the yeas and nays.

Mr. President, I move to reconsider that vote.

Madam President, I ask that the pending amendment be set aside and amendment No. 66 be called up.

Madam President, this is a fairly straightforward amendment. It actually follows the guidelines of the recommendations of the Office of Management and Budget. The administration claims that during this sequestration period we will have to furlough essential workers, which will negatively impact the daily lives of the American people.

Despite dire warnings to cut TSA agents--by the way, Director Pistole thinks they will be just fine, which is totally opposite of what the rest of the administration has said. Air traffic controllers, food inspectors, and thousands of new Federal jobs have been posted since the sequester went into effect.

Let me spend a minute on this issue. Since the sequester has been in effect, the Department of Treasury is looking to hire a leadership development specialist with a salary of $182,000. The FDA advertised for a social media management service to streamline management of multiple social media platforms. There are 23 openings on the Federal jobs list for recreation, which includes: recreation aide, recreation specialist, and recreation assistant. The Air Force is looking to hire several full-time painters. There is a search to pay $165,000 for a director of history and museum policies and programs.

The list continues: The Department of Treasury is currently advertising for an outreach manager. The Department of Labor is looking for a staff assistant at $81,000 a year to answer the phone. There is a search for a policy coordinator for the Department of Health and Human Services to attend and facilitate meetings at $81,000 a year. There is an opening for a director for the Air Force history and museums policies and programs at $165,000 a year. There is another opening for an analyst for the Legislative Affairs Office at the Marine Corps for $90,000 a year. The Department of Agriculture is looking for a director of the government employee services at a range of $179,000 a year.

There is an opening for counsel for the Morris K. Udall Scholarship Foundation at $155,000 a year, an opening for an executive assistant at the Department of Agriculture Forest Service to prepare itineraries for travel plans, an opening for an executive staff officer for the Air Force to represent the director of staff at meetings to write draft reports and memos at $93,000.

These are all nonpriority hirings at a time when we are in sequester. What this amendment would do is simply implement OMB's guidance and freeze hiring for nonessential Federal positions during sequestration but still allow hiring of employees defined by the Office of Personnel Management as exempted or emergency personnel.

If this amendment does not freeze hiring of exempted or emergency employees as defined by OPM--and we all know what that means--there is also an exemption in here that gives agencies the flexibility to know which positions are critical to performing duties and allows their progression.

Right now the agencies are not following OMB's guidance. We hear about possible furloughs, but a good portion

of those furloughs would never be necessary if, in fact, the agencies would follow OMB's guidance. The government is seeking to hire travel specialists, recreation aides, public affairs specialists, outreach managers, librarians, historians, administrative assistants, and many other nonessential positions.

The Department of Health and Human Services has posted a job opening for a travel specialist with a salary of $97,000 a year, and the job is to obtain domestic and international travel for HHS officials. It is not essential to their overall mission and actually facilitates more travel, which is one of the things also recommended by OMB in their guidance that they are not to do.

All we are saying is follow the OMB guidance in freezing nonessential new hiring and we could prevent furloughs to the government workers carrying out essential services and mission-critical duties today.

I have no question that some of these positions can be helpful to the agency which they have advertised for, but they are not necessary at this time until we get past this pothole in the road. Canceling job openings at the FAA of two community planners and four management program assistants would spare 1,000 air traffic controllers from furlough. Let me say that again. Just canceling and not hiring these four people at FAA could affect 1,000 Federal employees. Canceling just one job opening for a librarian at the Department of Agriculture could offset one furlough a day for as many as 750 entry-level workers at the Department of Agriculture.

What we are asking is simply for the agencies to follow the guidance that has already been out there, and we would mandate that as part of this continuing resolution omnibus appropriations bill.

With that, I yield the floor.

First of all, I am so excited with the chairman and ranking member of the Appropriations Committee. I have to say, since I have been in the Senate, I have found these two individuals more than capable to work with and more than willing to work with me and I wish to congratulate them on bringing their bill to the floor.

I have to very adamantly disagree because I think the chairman of the committee has missed my point. Every American family over the last 5 years has been making tough decisions about priorities. By not hiring some of what most Americans--a wall can get painted 6 months later. It doesn't have to be painted today. As a matter of fact, if we go over to all the Senate and House office buildings, we see the Architect of the Capitol repainting all the walls, with wet signs out there, while we can't let the visitors into our buildings. There is something wrong with us in the way we are managing. We are painting walls that don't have to be painted at the same time we make citizens wait in line for an hour and a half to get into our buildings.

It is about priorities. The fact is, if we don't fill some of these superfluous positions that are not absolutely necessary right now, many Federal employees will not get furloughed. That is the point I am making. I can't believe

we have to have a research librarian right now at the Air Force at a time when we don't have the money to put our pilots in the air to keep them trained.

So we are not talking about essential employees. By the way, essential and excepted employees are prison guards. Not one of them will be furloughed. So if we care about Federal employees, we do not want to spend money on positions that are truly not necessary right now, given the priorities, so the rest of the Federal workforce can be there.

Let me go back through this list again. Is it important to hire a lawyer for the Morris K. Udall Scholarship Foundation at a salary of $155,000 right now? Is that important? How many people in the Federal Government would that keep from being furloughed and the services continue if we don't fill that position? How about an executive assistant to the Department of Agriculture Forest Service to prepare itineraries and briefing and information material packages at $57,000.

What we don't get is all the rest of America is doing this already and now the OMB has recommended we do it and the agencies will not do it. We ought to tell them to do it for the benefit of the Federal employees who are working for us right now because they are the ones who are going to get furloughed. By not hiring these absolutely--I don't doubt they are positions we can use and are effective in many areas, but they are not a priority right now. I would think the priority right now would be having the people we have employed working.

How about a leadership development specialist at Treasury; is that really a priority right now, at $182,000 a year? That is a priority, while laying off IRS employees so people get their refund back? Tell me which one is more important. I would think the American taxpayers would rather get an answer than a busy signal when they call the IRS versus us hiring a leadership development specialist. There are 23 openings related to recreation at the FDA right now--for recreation. Is that truly a priority for us right now?

We have a 60-vote limit on this. I am fine with a 60-vote threshold. But America is going to vote 80 percent or 90 percent with what I am recommending. We have a 60-vote threshold so we can make sure it doesn't happen, so we don't apply priorities, so we don't apply common sense, and everybody knows that if this was at a 50-vote margin, it would fly through here. The reason it is 60 is so we can protect people politically and not do the best right thing for America.

This bill is going to go through here. We are going to pass it. The government isn't going to be shut down. We are going to conference it and get it worked out. Senator Shelby and Senator Mikulski will get that job done. We have absolute confidence in them.

This isn't a deal killer; this is common sense. This is what every business, every family in America is doing right now. They don't spend money they don't have on things that aren't absolutely necessary, and that is all this amendment does.

I yield the floor.

I note the absence of a quorum.

I ask for the yeas and nays.